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Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Table of Contents:
A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.
C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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A. EVENTS AND ACTIONS
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TODAY! VERY IMPORTANT!
NEXT MEETING OF THE UNITED NATIONAL ANTIWAR COMMITTEE (UNAC)
SUNDAY, JANUARY 9, 1:00 P.M.
CENTRO DEL PUEBLO
474 VALENCIA STREET
(BETWEEN 16TH AND 15TH STREETS, SAN FRANCISCO)
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ORGANIZING MEETING FOR MARCH 19 MARCH AND RALLY AGAINST THE WARS
The first organizing meeting for the SF March 19 march and rally will be on Sunday, Jan. 16 at 2pm at the Local 2 union hall, 209 Golden Gate Ave.
[See call for March 19 immediately below...bw]
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
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[StopFBI-National] Jan. 25: Protest FBI and Grand Jury Repression!
Join the National Day of Action on Tuesday, January 25, 2011
In December 2010, under the direction of U.S. Attorney Patrick Fitzgerald, the FBI delivered 9 new subpoenas in Chicago to anti-war and Palestine solidarity activists - bringing the total number of subpoenaed activists to 23. Patrick Fitzgerald's office is ordering the 9 to appear at a Grand Jury in Chicago on January 25.
In response, we are calling for protests across the country and around the world to show our solidarity. Hundreds of organizations and thousands of people will be protesting at Federal Buildings, FBI offices, and other appropriate places, showing solidarity with the 9 newly subpoenaed activists and with all the activists whose homes were raided by the FBI.
Fitzgerald's expanding web of repression already includes the 14 subpoenaed when the FBI stormed into homes on September 24th, carting away phones, computers, notebooks, diaries and children's artwork. In October, all fourteen activists from Chicago, Minneapolis, and Michigan decided to not participate in the secret proceedings of Fitzgerald's Grand Jury. Each signed a letter invoking their Fifth Amendment rights. However, three women from Minneapolis - Tracy Molm, Anh Pham and Sarah Martin - are facing re-activated subpoenas. They are standing strong and we are asking you to stand with them - and with the newly subpoenaed nine activists - by protesting Patrick Fitzgerald and his use of the Grand Jury and FBI to repress anti-war and international solidarity activists.
Defend free speech! Defend the right to organize! Opposing war and occupation is not a crime!
**Tell Patrick Fitzgerald to call off the Grand Jury!
**Stop FBI raids and repression!
Please organize a local protest or picket in your city or on your campus and e-mail us at stopfbi@gmail.com to let us know what you have planned.
In Struggle,
--Tom Burke
The Committee to Stop FBI Repression
www.StopFBI.net - stopfbi@gmail.com - 612-379-3585
petition: http://www.stopfbi.net/petition
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Saturday, March 19, 2011:
Day of Action to Resist the War Machine!
8th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq
Scores of organizations coming together for worldwide protests
In San Francisco, the theme of the March 19 march and rally will be "No to War & Colonial Occupation - Fund Jobs, Healthcare & Education - Solidarity with SF Hotel Workers!" 12,000 SF hotel workers, members of UNITE-HERE Local 2, have been fighting for a new contract that protects their healthcare, wages and working conditions. The SF action will include a march to boycotted hotels in solidarity with the Lo. 2 workers. The first organizing meeting for the SF March 19 march and rally will be on Sunday, Jan. 16 at 2pm at the Local 2 union hall, 209 Golden Gate Ave.
In Los Angeles, the March 19 rally and march will gather at 12 noon at Hollywood and Vine.
March 19 is the 8th anniversary of the invasion and occupation of Iraq. Iraq today remains occupied by 50,000 U.S. soldiers and tens of thousands of foreign mercenaries.
The war in Afghanistan is raging. The U.S. is invading and bombing Pakistan. The U.S. is financing endless atrocities against the people of Palestine, relentlessly threatening Iran and bringing Korea to the brink of a new war.
While the United States will spend $1 trillion for war, occupation and weapons in 2011, 30 million people in the United States remain unemployed or severely underemployed, and cuts in education, housing and healthcare are imposing a huge toll on the people.
Actions of civil resistance are spreading.
On Dec. 16, 2010, a veterans-led civil resistance at the White House played an important role in bringing the anti-war movement from protest to resistance. Enduring hours of heavy snow, 131 veterans and other anti-war activists lined the White House fence and were arrested. Some of those arrested will be going to trial, which will be scheduled soon in Washington, D.C.
Saturday, March 19, 2011, the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, will be an international day of action against the war machine.
Protest and resistance actions will take place in cities and towns across the United States. Scores of organizations are coming together. Demonstrations are scheduled for San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, D.C., and more.
Click this link to endorse the March 19, 2011, Call to Action:
http://www2.answercoalition.org/site/Survey?SURVEY_ID=8062&ACTION_REQUIRED=URI_ACTION_USER_REQUESTS
A.N.S.W.E.R. Coalition
http://www.AnswerCoalition.org/
info@AnswerCoalition.org
National Office in Washington DC: 202-265-1948
Boston: 857-334-5084 | New York City: 212-694-8720 | Chicago: 773-463-0311
San Francisco: 415-821-6545| Los Angeles: 213-251-1025 | Albuquerque: 505-268-2488
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Are you joining us on April 8 at the Pentagon in a climate chaos protest codenamed "Operation Disarmageddon?" It has been decided that affinity groups will engage in nonviolent autonomous actions. Do you have an affinity group? Do you have an idea for an action?
So far these are some of the suggested actions:
Send a letter to Sec. of War Robert Gates demanding a meeting to disclose the Pentagon's role in destroying the planet. He will ignore the letter, so a delegation would then go to the Metro Entrance to demand a meeting.
Use crime tape around some area of the Pentagon. The idea of crime/danger taping off the building could be done just outside the main Pentagon reservation entrance (intersection of Army/Navy) making the Alexandria PD the arresting authority (if needed) and where there is no ban on photography. Hazmat suits, a 'converted' truck (or other vehicle) could be part of the street theater. The area where I am thinking is also almost directly below I-95 and there is a bridge over the intersection - making a banner drop possible. Perhaps with the hazmat/street closure at ground level with a banner from above. If possible a coordinated action could be done at other Pentagon entrances and / or other war making institutions.
A procession onto the Pentagon reservation, without reservations, and set up a camp on one of the lawns surrounding The Pentagon. This contingent would reclaim the space in the name of peace and Mother Earth. This contingent would plan to stay there until The Pentagon is turned into a 100% green building using sustainable energy employing people who work for peace and the abolishment of war and life-affirming endeavors.
Bring a potted tree to be placed on the Pentagon's property to symbolize the need to radically reduce its environmental destructiveness.
Since the Pentagon is failing to return to the taxpayers the money it has misappropriated, "Foreclose on the Pentagon."
Banner hanging from a bridge.
Hand out copies of David Swanson's book WAR IS A LIE. Try to deliver a copy to Secretary of War Robert Gates.
Have short speeches in park between Pentagon and river; nice photo with Pentagon in background.
Die-in and chalk or paint outlines of victim's bodies everywhere that remain after the arrest to point to where real crimes are really being committed.
Establish command center, Peacecom? Paxcom? Put several people in white shirts and ties plus a few generals directing their armies for "Operation Disarmageddon."
Make the linkage between the tax dollars going to the Pentagon and war tax resistance. Use the WRL pie chart and carry banners "foreclose on war" and "money for green jobs not war jobs."
Hold a rally with representative speakers before going to the Pentagon Reservation. This would be an opportunity to speak out against warmongering and the Pentagon's role in destroying the environment.
As part of "Operation Disarmageddon," we will take a tree and plant it on the reservation. Our sign reads, "Plant trees not landmines."
Use crime tape on Army/Navy Drive to declare the Pentagon a crime scene. Do street theater there as well. Other affinity groups could go to selected entrances.
Establish a Peace Command Center at the Pentagon. Hold solidarity actions at federal buildings and corporate offices.
What groups have you contacted to suggest joining us at the Pentagon? See below for those who plan to be at the Pentagon on April 8 and for what groups have been contacted.
Kagiso,
Max
April 8, 2011 participants
Beth Adams
Ellen Barfield
Tim Chadwick
Joy First
Jeffrey Halperin
Malachy Kilbride
Max Obuszewski
David Swanson
April 8 Outreach
Beth Adams -- Earth First, Puppet Underground, Emma's Revolution, Joe Gerson-AFSC Cambridge, Code Pink(national via Lisa Savage in Maine), Vets for Peace, FOR, UCC Justice & Witness Ministries, Traprock, Nipponzan Myohoji Buddhist Order, (National-INt'l) Vets for Peace and WILPF, Pace e Bene, Christian Peace Witness & UCC Justice & Witness (Cleveland).
Tim Chadwick -- Brandywine, Lepoco, Witness against Torture, Vets for Peace (Thomas Paine Chapter Lehigh Valley PA), and Witness for Peace DC.
Jeffrey Halperin -- peace groups in Saratoga Spring, NY
Jack Lombardo - UNAC will add April 8 2011 to the Future Actions page on our blog, and make note in upcoming E-bulletins, but would appreciate a bit of descriptive text from the organizers and contact point to include when we do - so please advise ASAP! Also, we'll want to have such an announcement for our next print newsletter, which will be coming out in mid-December.
Max Obuszewski - Jonah House & Pledge of Resistance-Baltimore
Bonnie Urfer notified 351 individuals and groups on the Nukewatch list
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Endorse the call to action from the United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Bring the Troops Home Now!
March and Rally
April 9th, 2011
New York City (Union Sq. at noon)and San Francisco (Time and place to be announced)
--Bring U.S. Troops Now: Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan! End the sanctions and stop the threats of war against the people of Iran, North Korea and Yemen. No to war and plunder of the people of Latin America, the Caribbean and Africa! End U.S. Aid to Israel! End U.S. Support to the Israeli Occupation of Palestine and the Siege of Gaza!
--Trillions for jobs, education, social services, an end to all foreclosures, quality single-payer healthcare for all, a massive conversion to sustainable and planet-saving energy systems and public transportation and reparations to the victims of U.S. terror at home and abroad.
--End FBI raids on antiwar, social justice, and international solidarity activists, an end to the racist persecution and prosecutions that ravage Muslim communities, an end to police terror in Black and Latino communities, full rights and legality for immigrants and an end to all efforts to repress and punish Wikileaks and its contributors and founders.
--Immediate end to torture, rendition, secret trials, drone bombings and death squads
To add your group's name to the endorser list, local, state or national, please contact:
United National Antiwar Committee
P.O. Box 123 Delmar, New York 12054
518-227-6947 UNACpeace.org unacpeace@gmail.com
email you endorsement to:
jmackler@lmi.net and cc: unacpeace@gmail.com
Initial List of Endorsers (List in formation)
* = For Identification only
Endorsers:
United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC)
Center for Constitutional Rights
Muslim Peace Coalition, USA
Voices for Creative Nonviolence
Veterans for Peace
International Action Center
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom
Fellowship of Reconciliation
Black Agenda Report
Code Pink
National Assembly to End U.S. Wars and Occupations
World Can't Wait
Campaign for Peace and Democracy
Project Salam
Canadian Peace Alliance
BAYAN USA
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Office of the Americas
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
Middle East Children's Alliance
Tariq Ali
Dr. Margaret Flowers PNHP *
Ramsey Clark
Ambassador Syed Ahsani, Former Ambassador from Pakistan
Ahmed Shawki, editor, International Socialist Review
Ali Abunimah, Palestinian American Journalist
Alice Sturn Sutter, Washington Heights Women in Black *
Al-Awda NY: the Palestine Right to Return Coalition
American Iranian Friendship Committee
American Muslim Task Force, Dallas/Ft. Worth
Ana Edwards, Chair, Sacred Ground Historical Reclamation Project - Richmond, Va.
Anthony Arnove, Author, "Iraq: The logic of Withdrawal"
Andy Griggs, Co-chair, California Teachers Association, Peace and Justice Caucus/UTLA-retired*
B. Ross Ashley, NDP Socialist Caucus, Canada *
Bail Out the People Movement
Bay Area United Against War Newsletter
Barrio Unido, San Francisco
Bashir Abu-Manneh
Baltimore Job Is a Right Campaign
Baltimore-Washington Area Peace Council, US Peace Council Chapter
Battered Mother's Custody Conference
Bethlehem Neighbors for Peace
Blanca Misse, Student Worker Action Team/UC Berkeley, Academic Workers for Democratic Union - UAW 2865 *
Blauvelt Dominican sisters Social Justice Ministry
Bob Hernandez, Chapter President, SEIU Local 1021*
Bonnie Weinstein - Bay Area United Against Wars Newsletter
Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights
Boston UNAC
Boston University Anti-War Coalition
Café Intifada - Los Angeles
Camilo E. Mejia, Iraq war veteran and resister
Campaign for a Mass Party of Labor
Carole Seligman - Labor Action Committee to Free Mumia Abu-Jamal *
Central Jersey Coalition Against Endless War
Chesapeake Citizens
Howard Terry Adcock, Colombia Support Network, Austin (TX) , Center for Peace and Justice *
Coalition for Justice - Blacksburg, Va.
Colombian Front for Socialism (FECOPES)
Columbus Campaign for Arms Control
Committee for Justice to Defend the Los Angeles 8
Dave Welsh, Delegate, San Francisco Labor Council
David Swanson, WarIsACrime.org
David Keil - Metro West Peace Action (MWPA) *
Defenders for Freedom, Justice & Equality - Virginia
Derrick O'Keefe, Co-chair StopWar.ca (Vancouver)
Detroit Committee to Stop FBI/Grand Jury Repression.
Doug Bullock, Albany County Legislator
Dr. Andy Coates PNHP *
DRUM (Desis Rising Up and Moving) - New York
Elaine Brower - national steering committee of World Can't Wait and anti-war military mom
Fight Imperialism Stand Together (FIST)
Freedom Road Socialist Organization
Freedom Socialist Party
Gilbert Achcar - Lebanese academic and writer
Guilderland Neighbors for Peace
Haiti Action Committee
Haiti Liberte
Hands off Venezuela
Howie Hawkins, Co-Chair, Green Party of New York State *
IIan Pappe, Director Exeter University, European Centre for Palestine Studies
International Concerned Family and Friends of Mumia Abu-Jamal
International Socialist Organization
International support Haiti Network (ISHN)
Iraq Peace Action Coalition - Minneapolis
Italo-American Progressive Fraternal Society
Janata Dal (United), India
Jersey City Peace Movement
Jimmy Massey, Founding member of IVAW
John Pilger, Journalist and Documentary film maker
Journal Square Homeless Coalition
Justice for Fallujah Project
Kclabor.org
Karen Schieve, United Educators of San Francisco *
Kim Nguyen, Metrowest Peace Action (MWPA)*
Kwame Binta, The November Coalition
Larry Pinkvey, Black Activist Writers Guild
Lillie "Ms. K" Branch-Kennedy - Director, Resource Information Help for the Disadvantaged (R.I.H.D.), Virginia
Lisa Savage, CODEPINK Maine, Bring Our War $$ Home Coalition *
Los Angeles - Palestine Labor Solidarity Committee
Maggie Zhou - ClimateSOS *
Maine Veterans for Peace
Malu Aina, Hawaii
Maria Cristina Gutierrez, Exec. Director, Companeros del Barrio
Mark Roman, Waterville Area Bridges for Peace & Justice
Marlena Santoyo, Germantown Friends Meeting, Philadelphia, PA
Mary Flanagan, United Teachers of Richmond *
Masjid As-Salam Mosque, Albany, NY
Mazin Qumsiyeh
Michigan Emergency Committee Against Wars and Injustice
Mike Alewitz, Central Ct. State University *
Middle East Crisis Committee
Mobilization Against War and Occupation - Vancouver, Canada
Mobilization to Free Mumia
Moratorium NOW Coalition to Stop Foreclosures, Evictions and Utility Shut-offs
Muslim Solidarity Committee
Nancy Murray, Boston Coalition for Palestinian Rights*
Nancy Parten, Witness For Peace *
Nellie Bailey, Harlem Tenants Council *
New Abolitionist Movement
New England United
New Jersey Labor Against War
New Socialist Project
New York City Labor Against the War
New York Collective of Radical Educators
No More Victims
Nodutdol for Korean Community Development
Northeast Peace and Justice Action Coalition
Northern California Committees of Correspondence for Democracy and Socialism
Northwest Greens
NotMyPriorities.org
Nuestro Norte Es El Sur ((NUNO-SUR) Our North is the South
Omar Barghouti, Human rights activist (Palestine)
Pakistan USA Freedom Forum
Pakistani Trade Union Defense Campaign
Palestinian Center for Rapprochement Between People
Peace Action Maine
Peace Action Montgomery
Peacemakers of Schoharie County, New York
Peace and Freedom Party
People of Faith, Connecticut
Peninsula Peace & Justice, Blue Hill, Maine
Peninsula Peace and Justice Center - Palo Alto, Ca.
Peoples Video Network
Phil Wilayto, Editor, The Virginia Defender
Philadelphia Against War
Progressive Peace Coalition, Columbus Ohio
Protestobama.org
Queen Zakia Shabazz - Director, United Parents Against Lead National, Inc.
Radio Free Maine
Ralph Poynter, Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
Revolutionary Workers Group
Rhode Island Mobilization Committee
Roland Sheppard, Retired Business Agent Painters Local #4, San Francisco *
Rochester Against War
Ron Jacobs, writer
Saladin Muhammad - Founding Member, Black Workers for Justice
Sarah Roche-Mahdi, Code Pink Boston*
Saratoga Peace Alliance
Senior Action Network
Seth Farber, PhD., Institute of Mind and Behavior *
Sherry Wolf - International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, Author Sexuality and Socialism
Siege Busters Working Group
Socialist Action
Socialist Organizer
Socialist Viewpoint
Solidarity
Solidarity Committee of the Capital District
Staten Island Council for Peace & Justice
Steve Scher, Breen Party of NYC 26 AD *
Stewart Robinson, Stop Targeting Ohio Poor *
Stop the Wars Coalition, Boston
Tarak Kauff, Veterans for Peace
The Campaign Against Sanctions & Military Intervention in Iran
The Thomas Merton Center Antiwar Committee
Twin Cities Peace Campaign
Upper Hudson Peace Action
Virginia Defender
West Hartford Citizens for Peace and Justice
WESPAC Foundation
Women against Military Madness
Women in Black, Westchester
Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Pittsburgh
Workers International League
Workers World Party
Youth for International Socialism
To remove yourself from the UNAC listserv, please send an email to:
UNAC-unsubscribe@lists.riseup.net
To add yourself to the UNAC listserv, please send an email to:
UNAC-subscribe@lists.riseup.net
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B. VIDEO, FILM, AUDIO. ART, POETRY, ETC.:
[Some of these videos are embeded on the BAUAW website:
http://bauaw.blogspot.com/ or bauaw.org ...bw]
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Wall Street Fat-Cats Flip Public Service Workers the Bird
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hTcSOygSBBM
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Song for Bradley Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_eood7DUwI
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Supermax Prison Cell Extraction - Maine
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3jUfK5i_lQs&feature=player_embedded
Warning, this is an extremely brutal video. What do you think? Is this torture?
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Rachel Maddow- New GOP scapegoat- public workers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JZ5byLyKPRI
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Did You Know?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY
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These videos refer to what happened at the G-20 Summit in Toronto June 26-27 of this year. The importance of this is that police were caught on tape and later confirmed that they sent police into the demonstration dressed as "rioting" protesters. One cop was caught with a large rock in his hand. Clearly, this is proof of police acting as agent provocatours. And we should expect this to continue and escalate. That's why everyone should be aware of these facts...bw
police accused of attempting to incite violence at G20 summ
Protestors at Montebello are accusing police of trying to incite violence. Video on YouTube shows union officials confronting three men that were police officers dressing up as demonstrators. The union is demanding to know if the Prime Minister's Office was involved in trying to discredit the demonstrators.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BWbgnyUCC7M
quebec police admit going undercover at montebello protests
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAfzUOx53Rg&feature=related
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The Wars in "Vietnamistan!" (The name Daniel Ellsberg gave to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as quoted from the video...bw)
Veterans for Peace White House Civil Disobedience to End War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOde31QYbI0&feature=player_embedded
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John Pilger: Global Support for WikiLeaks is "Rebellion" Against U.S. Militarism, Secrecy
December 15, 2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzaclKj2B8M
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WikiLeaks founder concern for Manning
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dPrShC8qx4k&feature=player_embedded
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Newsnight: Bailed Julian Assange live interview (16Dec10)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NouXB5JACCw&feature=player_embedded
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Julian Assange: 'ongoing attempts to extradite me'
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C30UhZDOO9A&feature=player_embedded
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Published on Thursday, December 16, 2010 by Countdown With Keith Olbermann
Quantico, the New Gitmo
http://www.commondreams.org/video/2010/12/16-0
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GO TO: http://hiphopandpolitics.wordpress.com/2010/12/12/day-3-of-historic-prison-strike-in-georgia-blacked-out-by-media-guards-committing-violence/
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Posted: December 12, 2010 by Davey D in 2010 Daily News, Political articles
On Thursday morning, December 9, 2010, thousands of Georgia prisoners refused to work, stopped all other activities and locked down in their cells in a peaceful protest for their human rights. The December 9 Strike became the biggest prisoner protest in the history of the United States. Thousands of men, from Augusta, Baldwin, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Smith and Telfair State Prisons, among others, initiated this strike to press the Georgia Department of Corrections ("DOC") to stop treating them like animals and slaves and institute programs that address their basic human rights. They set forth the following demands:
--A LIVING WAGE FOR WORK
--EDUCATIONAL OPPORTUNITIES
--DECENT HEALTH CARE
--AN END TO CRUEL AND UNUSUAL PUNISHMENTS
--DECENT LIVING CONDITIONS
--NUTRITIONAL MEALS
--VOCATIONAL AND SELF-IMPROVEMENT OPPORTUNITIES
--ACCESS TO FAMILIES
--JUST PAROLE DECISIONS
Despite that the prisoners' protest remained non-violent, the DOC violently attempted to force the men back to work-claiming it was "lawful" to order prisoners to work without pay, in defiance of the 13th Amendment's abolition of slavery. In Augusta State Prison, six or seven inmates were brutally ripped from their cells by CERT Team guards and beaten, resulting in broken ribs for several men, one man beaten beyond recognition. This brutality continues there. At Telfair, the Tactical Squad trashed all the property in inmate cells. At Macon State, the Tactical Squad has menaced the men for two days, removing some to the "hole," and the warden ordered the heat and hot water turned off. Still, today, men at Macon, Smith, Augusta, Hays and Telfair State Prisons say they are committed to continuing the strike. Inmate leaders, representing blacks, Hispanics, whites, Muslims, Rastafarians, Christians, have stated the men will stay down until their demands are addressed, one issuing this statement:
"...Brothers, we have accomplished a major step in our struggle...We must continue what we have started...The only way to achieve our goals is to continue with our peaceful sit-down...I ask each and every one of my Brothers in this struggle to continue the fight. ON MONDAY MORNING, WHEN THE DOORS OPEN, CLOSE THEM. DO NOT GO TO WORK. They cannot do anything to us that they haven't already done at one time or another. Brothers, DON'T GIVE UP NOW. Make them come to the table. Be strong. DO NOT MAKE MONEY FOR THE STATE THAT THEY IN TURN USE TO KEEP US AS SLAVES...."
When the strike began, prisoner leaders issued the following call: "No more slavery. Injustice in one place is injustice to all. Inform your family to support our cause. Lock down for liberty!"
Here's the link to our recent Hard Knock Radio interview w/ Elaine Brown on this historic strike
http://www.kpfa.org/archive/id/65925
READ Black Agenda Report Article at: http://www.BlackAgendaReport.com/?q=content/ga-prisoner-strike-continues-second-day-corporate-media-mostly-ignores-them-corrections-offi
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Domestic Espionage Alert - Houston PD to use surveillance drone in America!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpstrc15Ogg
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15 year old Tells Establishment to Stick-it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U_gHUiL4P8&feature=player_embedded#
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POLICE KETTLING (STUDENT DEMONSTRATION against the EDUCATION CUTS), LONDON, 30-11-2010
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hRV9h2dyBVU&NR=1
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Julian Assange: Why the world needs WikiLeaks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVGqE726OAo&feature=player_embedded
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LOWKEY - TERRORIST? (OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kmBnvajSfWU
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Coal Ash: One Valley's Tale
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6E7h-DNvwx4&feature=player_embedded
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Flashmob: Cape Town Opera say NO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wElyrFOnKPk
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Video of massive French protest -- inspiring!
http://www.dailymotion.com/Talenceagauchevraiment
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"Don't F*** With Our Activists" - Mobilizing Against FBI Raid
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XyG3dIUGQvQ
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C. SPECIAL APPEALS AND ONGOING CAMPAIGNS
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Hunger strike of the Lucasville Uprising prisoners - starting Monday, Jan. 3
Posted on December 25, 2010 by denverabc
http://denverabc.wordpress.com/2010/12/25/hunger-strike-of-the-lucasville-uprising-prisoners-starting-monday-jan-3/
Dear family members, friends and supporters of the Lucasville uprising prisoners,
Siddique Abdullah Hasan, Bomani Shakur (Keith LaMar), Jason Robb and Namir Mateen (James Were) will start a hunger strike on Monday Jan. 3 to protest their 23-hour a day lock down for nearly 18 years. These four death-sentenced prisoners have been single-celled (in solitary) in conditions of confinement significantly more severe than the conditions experienced by the approximately 125 other death-sentenced prisoners at the supermax prison, Ohio State Penitentiary in Youngstown. They are completely isolated from any direct human contact, even during "recreation". They are restricted from certain kinds of good ordering including gold weather items for the almost unbearably cold condtions in the cells. They are denied access to computer databases they need in order to prepare their appeals. It has been made clear to them that the outcome of their annual "security level reviews" is pretermined, as one reads, "...regardless of your behavior while confined at OSP."
Prisoners whose death sentences were for heinous crimes are able to win privileges based on good behavior, but not the death-sentenced Lucasville uprising prisoners.
Meanwhile out in the world, the U.S. Supreme Court has granted additional due process rights to some of the Gauantanamo prisoners, some death-sentenced prisoners have been exonerated or had their sentences commuted, an evidentiary hearing was ordered for Troy Anthony Davis, and prisoners in Georgia are engaging in a non-violent strike for improvements in a wide range of conditions. So the four death-sentenced Lucasville uprising prinsoners have decided that being punished by the worst conditions allowable under the law has gone far enough, especially since their convictions were based on perjured testimony. They are innocent! They were wrongfully convicted! They are political prisoners. This farce has gone on far too long and their executions loom in the not too distant future. These brave men are ready to take another stand. We ask that you get ready to support them.
The hunger strike will proceed in an organized manner, with one prisoner, probably Bomani Shakur starting on Jan.3. The hunger strike becomes official after he has refused 9 meals. Therefore the plan is that 3 days later, Siddiquie Abdullah Hasan will start his hunger strike and 3 days later, Jason Robb will follow. Namir Mateen has a great willingness to participate and plans to take part to the extent that his diabetes will allow.
On the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Saturday, Jan. 15, we will be holding a press conference about the hunger strike and other issues pertaining to Ohio State Penitentiary. Details of time and location are being worked out. There will very likely be a brief rally near the gates of OSP, as we have in previous years to honor Dr. King, to protest the death penalty and to protest the farce of the Lucasville uprising convictions. There will probably be one or more vans and/or a car caravan to OSP for the event. Stay tuned for more information.
Please forward this email to other people you think would be interested, here in Ohio, around the country and around the world.
the Lucasville Uprising Freedom Network
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Call for EMERGENCY RESPONSE Action if Assange Indicted,
Dear Friends:
We write in haste, trying to reach as many of you as possible although the holiday break has begun.......This plan for an urgent "The Day After" demonstration is one we hope you and many, many more organizations will take up as your own, and mobilize for. World Can't Wait asks you to do all you can to spread it through list serves, Facebook, twitter, holiday gatherings.
Our proposal is very very simple, and you can use the following announcement to mobilize - or write your own....
ANY DAY NOW . . . IN THE EVENT THAT THE U.S. INDICTS JULIAN ASSANGE
An emergency public demonstration THE DAY AFTER any U.S. criminal indictment is announced against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange. Spread the word and call people to come out, across the whole range of movements and groups: anti-war, human rights, freedom of information/freedom of the press, peace, anti-torture, environmental, students and youth, radicals and revolutionaries, religious, civil liberties, teachers and educators, journalists, anti-imperialists, anti-censorship, anti-police state......
At the Federal Building in San Francisco, we'll form ourselves into a human chain "surrounding" the government that meets the Wikileaked truth with repression and wants to imprison and silence leakers, whistleblowers and truthtellers - when, in fact, these people are heroes. We'll say:
HANDS OFF WIKILEAKS! FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING!
Join the HUMAN CHAIN AROUND THE FEDERAL BUILDING!
New Federal Building, 7th and Mission, San Francisco (nearest BART: Civic Center)
4:00-6:00 PM on The Day FOLLOWING U.S. indictment of Assange
Bring all your friends - signs and banners - bullhorns.
Those who dare at great risk to themselves to put the truth in the hands of the people - and others who might at this moment be thinking about doing more of this themselves -- need to see how much they are supported, and that despite harsh repression from the government and total spin by the mainstream media, the people do want the truth told.
Brad Manning's Christmas Eve statement was just released by his lawyer: "Pvt. Bradley Manning, the lone soldier who stands accused of stealing millions of pages secret US government documents and handing them over to secrets outlet WikiLeaks, wants his supporters to know that they've meant a lot to him. 'I greatly appreciate everyone's support and well wishes during this time,' he said in a Christmas Eve statement released by his lawyer...." Read more here:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2010/12/mannings-message-christmas-eve-i-gr/
Demonstrations defending Wikileaks and Assange, and Brad Manning, have already been flowering around the world. Make it happen here too.
Especially here . . .
To join into this action plan, or with questions, contact World Can't Wait or whichever organization or listserve you received this message from.
World Can't Wait, SF Bay
415-864-5153
sf@worldcantwait.org
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Email received from Lynne Stewart:
12/19/10; 12:03pm
Dear Folks:
Some nuts and bolts and trivia,
1. New Address
Lynne Stewart
Federal Medical Center, Carswell
53504 - 054
Unit 2N
P.O. Box 27137
Fort Worth, TEXAS 76127
2. Visiting is very liberal but first I have to get people on my visiting list Wait til I or the lawyers let you know. The visits are FRI, SAT, SUN AND MON for 4 hours and on weekends 8 to 3. Bring clear plastic change purse with lots of change to buy from the machines. Brief Kiss upon arrival and departure, no touching or holding during visit (!!) On visiting forms it may be required that you knew me before I came to prison. Not a problem for most of you.
3. One hour time difference
4. Commissary Money is always welcome It is how I pay for the phone and for email. Also need it for a lot that prison doesn't supply in terms of food and "sundries" (pens!) A very big list that includes Raisins, Salad Dressing , ankle sox, mozzarella (definitely not from Antonys--more like a white cheddar, Sanitas Corn Chips but no Salsa etc. To add money, you do this by using Western Union and a credit card by phone or you can send a USPO money order or Business or Govt Check. The negotiable instruments (PAPER!) need to be sent to Federal Bureau of Prisons , 53504-054, Lynne Stewart, PO Box 474701, Des Moines Iowa 50947-001 (Payable to Lynne Stewart, 53504-054) They hold the mo or checks for 15 days. Western Union costs $10 but is within 2 hours. If you mail, your return address must be on the envelope. Unnecessarily complicated ? Of course, it's the BOP !)
5. Food is vastly improved. Just had Sunday Brunch real scrambled eggs, PORK sausage, Baked or home fried potatoes, Butter(sweet whipped M'God !!) Grapefruit juice Toast , orange. I will probably regain the weight I lost at MCC! Weighing against that is the fact that to eat we need to walk to another building (about at far as from my house to the F Train) Also included is 3 flights of stairs up and down. May try to get an elevator pass and try NOT to use it.
6. In a room with 4 bunks(small) about two tiers of rooms with same with "atrium" in middle with tv sets and tables and chairs. Estimate about 500 on Unit 2N and there are 4 units. Population Black, Mexicano and other spanish speaking (all of whom iron their underwear, Marta), White, Native Americans (few), no orientals or foreign speaking caucasians--lots are doing long bits, victims of drugs (meth etc) and boyfriends. We wear army style (khaki) pants with pockets tee shirts and dress shirts long sleeved and short sleeved. When one of the women heard that I hadn't ironed in 40 years, they offered to do the shirts for me. (This is typical of the help I get--escorted to meals and every other protection, explanations, supplies, etc. Mostly from white women.) One drawback is not having a bathroom in the room---have to go about 75 yards at all hours of the day and night --clean though.
7. Final Note--the sunsets and sunrises are gorgeous, the place is very open and outdoors there are pecan trees and birds galore (I need books for trees and birds (west) The full moon last night gladdened my heart as I realized it was shining on all of you I hold dear.
Love Struggle
Lynne
The address of her Defense Committee is:
Lynne Stewart Defense Committee
1070 Dean Street
Brooklyn, New York 11216
For further information:
718-789-0558 or 917-853-9759
Please make a generous contribution to her defense.
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Help end the inhumane treatment of Bradley Manning!
Bradley Manning Support Network. December 22, 2010
The Marine Brig at Quantico, Virginia is using "injury prevention" as a vehicle to inflict extreme pre-trial punishment on accused Wikileaks whistleblower Army PFC Bradley Manning (photo right). These "maximum conditions" are not unheard-of during an inmate's first week at a military confinement facility, but when applied continuously for months and with no end in sight they amount to a form of torture. Bradley, who just turned 23-years-old last week, has been held in solitary confinement since his arrest in late May. We're now turning to Bradley's supporters worldwide to directly protest, and help bring a halt to, the extremely punitive conditions of Bradley's pre-trial detention.
We need your help in pressing the following demands:
End the inhumane, degrading conditions of pre-trial confinement and respect Bradley's human rights. Specifically, lift the "Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order". This would allow Bradley meaningful physical exercise, uninterrupted sleep during the night, and a release from isolation. We are not asking for "special treatment". In fact, we are demanding an immediate end to the special treatment.
Quantico Base Commander
Colonel Daniel Choike
3250 Catlin Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-2707 (phone)
Quantico Brig Commanding Officer
CWO4 James Averhart
3247 Elrod Ave, Quantico VA 22134
+1-703-784-4242 (fax)
Background
In the wake of an investigative report last week by Glenn Greenwald of Salon.com giving evidence that Bradley Manning was subject to "detention conditions likely to create long-term psychological injuries", Bradley's attorney, David Coombs, published an article at his website on Saturday entitled "A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning". Mr. Coombs details the maximum custody conditions that Bradley is subject to at the Quantico Confinement Facility and highlights an additional set of restrictions imposed upon him under a Prevention of Injury (POI) watch order.
Usually enforced only through a detainee's first week at a confinement facility, or in cases of violent and/or suicidal inmates, the standing POI order has severely limited Manning's access to exercise, daylight and human contact for the past five months. The military's own psychologists assigned to Quantico have recommended that the POI order and the extra restrictions imposed on Bradley be lifted.
Despite not having been convicted of any crime or even yet formally indicted, the confinement regime Bradley lives under includes pronounced social isolation and a complete lack of opportunities for meaningful exercise. Additionally, Bradley's sleep is regularly interrupted. Coombs writes: "The guards are required to check on Manning every five minutes [...] At night, if the guards cannot see PFC Manning clearly, because he has a blanket over his head or is curled up towards the wall, they will wake him in order to ensure he is okay."
Denver Nicks writes in The Daily Beast that "[Bradley Manning's] attorney [...] says the extended isolation - now more than seven months of solitary confinement - is weighing on his client's psyche. [...] Both Coombs and Manning's psychologist, Coombs says, are sure Manning is mentally healthy, that there is no evidence he's a threat to himself, and shouldn't be held in such severe conditions under the artifice of his own protection."
In an article to be published at Firedoglake.com later today, David House, a friend of Bradley's who visits him regularly at Quantico, says that Bradley "has not been outside or into the brig yard for either recreation or exercise in four full weeks. He related that visits to the outdoors have been infrequent and sporadic for the past several months."
In an average military court martial situation, a defense attorney would be able to bring these issues of pre-trial punishment to the military judge assigned to the case (known as an Article 13 hearing). However, the military is unlikely to assign a judge to Bradley's case until the pre-trial Article 32 hearing is held (similar to an arraignment in civilian court), and that is not expected until February, March, or later-followed by the actual court martial trial months after that. In short, you are Bradley's best and most immediate hope.
What can you do?
Contact the Marine Corps officers above and respectfully, but firmly, ask that they lift the extreme pre-trial confinement conditions against Army PFC Bradley Manning.
Forward this urgent appeal for action widely.
Sign the "Stand with Brad" public petition and letter campaign at www.standwithbrad.org - Sign online, and we'll mail out two letters on your behalf to Army officials.
Donate to Bradley's defense fund at www.couragetoresist.org/bradley
References:
"The inhumane conditions of Bradley Manning's detention", by Glenn Greenwald for Salon.com, 15 December 2010
"A Typical Day for PFC Bradley Manning", by attorney David E. Coombs, 18 December 2010
"Bradley Manning's Life Behind Bars", by Denver Nicks for the Daily Beast, 17 December 2010
Bradley Manning Support Network
Courage To Resist
484 Lake Park Ave. #41
Oakland, CA 94610
510-488-3559
couragetoresist.org
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KOREA: Emergency Response Actions Needed
The United National Antiwar Committee urges the antiwar movement to begin to plan now for Emergency 5pm Day-of or Day-after demonstrations, should fighting break out on the Korean Peninsula or its surrounding waters.
As in past war crisis and U.S. attacks we propose:
NYC -- Times Square, Washington, D.C. -- the White House
In Many Cities - Federal Buildings
Many tens of thousands of U.S., Japanese and South Korean troops are mobilized on land and on hundreds of warships and aircraft carriers. The danger of a general war in Asia is acute.
China and Russia have made it clear that the scheduled military maneuvers and live-fire war "exercises" from an island right off the coast of north Korea (the Democratic People's Republic of Korea) by South Korea are very dangerous. The DPRK has made it clear that they consider these live-fire war exercises to be an act of war and they will again respond if they are again fired on.
The U.S. deployment of thousands of troops, ships, and aircraft in the area while South Korea is firing thousands of rounds of live ammunition and missiles is an enormously dangerous provocation, not only to the DPRK but to China. The Yellow Sea also borders China. The island and the waters where the war maneuvers are taking place are north of the Korean Demilitarized Zone and only eight miles from the coast of the DPRK.
On Sunday, December 19 in a day-long emergency session, the U.S. blocked in the UN Security Council any actions to resolve the crisis.
UNAC action program passed in Albany at the United National Antiwar Conference, July 2010 of over 800 antiwar, social justice and community organizations included the following Resolution on Korea:
15. In solidarity with the antiwar movements of Japan and Korea, each calling for U.S. Troops to Get Out Now, and given the great increase in U.S. military preparations against the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, National Peace Conference participants will organize immediate protests following any attack by the U.S. on Korea. U.S. war preparations include stockpiling hundreds of bunker-busters and conducting major war games near the territorial waters of China and Korea. In keeping with our stand for the right of self-determination and our demand of Out Now, the National Peace Conference calls for Bringing All U.S. Troops Home Now!
UNAC urges the whole antiwar movement to begin to circulate messages alerts now in preparation. Together let's join together and demand: Bring all U.S. Troops Home Now! Stop the Wars and the Threats of War.
The United National Antiwar Committee, www.UNACpeace.org
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In earnest support of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange:
http://readersupportednews.org/julian-assange-petition
rsn:Petition
We here undersigned express our support for the work and integrity of Julian Assange. We express concern that the charges against the WikiLeaks founder appear too convenient both in terms of timing and the novelty of their nature.
We call for this modern media innovator, and fighter for human rights extraordinaire, to be afforded the same rights to defend himself before Swedish justice that all others similarly charged might expect, and that his liberty not be compromised as a courtesy to those governments whose truths he has revealed have embarrassed.
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GAP Inc: End Your Relationship with Supplier that Allows Workers to be Burned Alive
http://humanrights.change.org/blog/view/workers_burned_alive_making_clothes_for_the_gap
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GEORGIA PRISON STRIKE PETITION:
http://ca.defendpubliceducation.org/?p=716
A handful of East Bay organizations have put together an open letter to the strikers. If your organization would like to become a signatory, you can email me to put you on it you and can do so here.
A Letter to the Prisoners on Strike in Georgia,
We, as members of activist and community organizations in the Bay Area of California, send our support for your strike against the terrible conditions you face in Georgia's prisons. We salute you for making history as your strike has become the largest prison strike in the history of this nation. As steadfast defenders of human and civil rights, we recognize the potential that your action has to improve the lives of millions subject to inhumane treatment in correctional facilities across this country.
Every single day, prisoners face the same deplorable and unnecessarily punitive conditions that you have courageously decided to stand up against. For too long, this nation has chosen silence in the face of the gross injustices that our brothers and sisters in prison are subjected to. Your fight against these injustices is a necessary and righteous struggle that must be carried out to victory.
We have heard about the brutal acts that Georgia Department of Corrections officers have been resorting to as a means of breaking your protest and we denounce them. In order to put a stop to the violence to which you have been subjected, we are in the process of contacting personnel at the different prison facilities and circulating petitions addressed to the governor and the Georgia DOC. We will continue to expose the DOC's shameless physical attacks on you and use our influence to call for an immediate end to the violence.
Here, in the Bay Area, we are all too familiar with the violence that this system is known to unleash upon our people. Recently, our community erupted in protest over the killing of an unarmed innocent black man named Oscar Grant by transit police in Oakland. We forced the authorities to arrest and convict the police officer responsible for Grant's murder by building up a mass movement. We intend to win justice with you and stop the violent repression of your peaceful protest in the same way-by appealing to the power and influence of the masses.
We fully support all of your demands. We strongly identify with your demand for expanded educational opportunities. In recent years, our state government has been initiating a series of massive cuts to our system of public education that continue to endanger our right to a quality, affordable education; in response, students all across our state have stood up and fought back just as you are doing now. In fact, students and workers across the globe have begun to organize and fight back against austerity measures and the corresponding violence of the state. Just in the past few weeks in Greece, Ireland, Spain, England, Italy, Haiti, Puerto Rico - tens and hundreds of thousands of students and workers have taken to the streets. We, as a movement, are gaining momentum and we do so even more as our struggles are unified and seen as interdependent. At times we are discouraged; it may seem insurmountable, but in the words of Malcolm X, "Power in defense of freedom is greater than power on behalf of tyranny and oppression."
You have inspired us. News of your strike, from day one, has served to inspire and invigorate hundreds of students and community organizers here in Berkeley and Oakland alone. We are especially inspired by your ability to organize across color lines and are interested in hearing an account from the inside of how this process developed and was accomplished. You have also encouraged us to take more direct actions toward radical prison reform in our own communities, namely Santa Rita County Jail and San Quentin Prison. We are now beginning the process of developing a similar set of demands regarding expediting processing (can take 20-30 hours to get a bed, they call it "bullpen therapy"), nutrition, visiting and phone calls, educational services, legal support, compensation for labor and humane treatment in general. We will also seek to unify the education and prison justice movements by collaborating with existing organizations that have been engaging in this work.
We echo your call: No more Slavery! Injustice to one is injustice to all!
In us, students, activists, the community members and people of the Bay Area, you have an ally. We will continue to spread the news about your cause all over the Bay Area and California, the country and world. We pledge to do everything in our power to make sure your demands are met.
In solidarity,
UC-Berkeley Student Worker Action Team (SWAT) _ Community Action Project (CAP) _ La Voz de los Trabajadores _ Laney College Student Unity & Power (SUP) _ Laney College Black Student Union (BSU)
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In Solidarity
By Kevin Cooper
On Thursday, December 9, 2010, the inmates in the state of Georgia sat down in unity and peace in order to stand up for their human rights.
African American, White, and Latino inmates put aside their differences, if they had any, and came together as a 'People' fighting for their humanity in a system that dehumanizes all of them.
For this they have my utmost respect and appreciation and support. I am in true solidarity with them all!
For further information about Kevin Cooper:
http://www.savekevincooper.org/
http://www.savekevincooper.org/pages/essays_content.html?ID=255
Reasonable doubts about executing Kevin Cooper
Chronicle Editorial
Monday, December 13, 2010
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/12/13/EDG81GP0I7.DTL
Death penalty -- Kevin Cooper is Innocent! Help save his life from San Quentin's death row!
URGENT ACTION APPEAL
- From Amnesty International USA
17 December 2010
Click here to take action online:
http://takeaction.amnestyusa.org/siteapps/advocacy/index.aspx?c=jhKPIXPCIoE&b=2590179&template=x.ascx&action=15084
To learn about recent Urgent Action successes and updates, go to
http://www.amnestyusa.org/iar/success
For a print-friendly version of this Urgent Action (PDF):
http://www.amnestyusa.org/actioncenter/actions/uaa25910.pdf
Kevin Cooper, who has been on death row in California for 25 years, is asking the outgoing state governor to commute his death sentence before leaving office on 2 January 2011. Kevin Cooper has consistently maintained his innocence of the four murders for which he was sentenced to death. Since 2004, a dozen federal appellate judges have indicated their doubts about his guilt.
On the night of 4 June 1983, Douglas and Peggy Ryen were hacked and stabbed to death in their home in Chino Hills, California, along with their 10-year-old daughter Jessica and 11-year-old houseguest Christopher Hughes. The couple's eight-year-old son, Joshua Ryen, was seriously wounded, but survived. He told investigators that the attackers were three or four white men. In hospital, he saw a picture of Kevin Cooper on television and said that Cooper, who is black, was not the attacker. However, the boy's later testimony - that he only saw one attacker - was introduced at the 1985 trial. The case has many other troubling aspects which call into question the reliability of the state's case and its conduct in obtaining this conviction (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/013/2004/en).
Kevin Cooper was less than eight hours from execution in 2004 when the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit granted a stay and sent the case back to the District Court for testing on blood and hair evidence, including to establish if the police had planted evidence. The District Court ruled in 2005 that the testing had not proved Kevin Cooper's innocence - his lawyers (and five Ninth Circuit judges) maintain that it did not do the testing as ordered. Nevertheless, in 2007, a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit upheld the District Court's ruling. One of the judges described the result as "wholly discomforting" because of evidence tampering and destruction, but noted that she was constrained by US law, which places substantial obstacles in the way of successful appeals.
In 2009, the Ninth Circuit refused to have the whole court rehear the case. Eleven of its judges dissented. One of the dissenting opinions, running to more than 80 pages and signed by five judges, warned that "the State of California may be about to execute an innocent man". On the question of the evidence testing, they said: "There is no way to say this politely. The district court failed to provide Cooper a fair hearing and...imposed unreasonable conditions on the testing" ordered by the Ninth Circuit. They pointed to a test result that, if valid, indicated that evidence had been planted, and they asserted that the district court had blocked further scrutiny of this issue.
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger had already denied clemency in 2004 when the Ninth Circuit issued its stay. At the time, he had said that the "courts have reviewed this case for more than eighteen years. Evidence establishing his guilt is overwhelming". Clearly, a notable number of federal judges disagree. The five judges in the Ninth Circuit's lengthy dissent in 2009 stated that the evidence of Kevin Cooper's guilt at his trial was "quite weak" and concluded that he "is probably innocent of the crimes for which the State of California is about to execute him".
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
On 2 June 1983, two days before the Chino Hills murders, Kevin Cooper had escaped from a minimum security prison, where he was serving a four-year term for burglary, and had hidden in an empty house near the Ryen home for two nights. After his arrest, he became the focus of public hatred. Outside the venue of his preliminary hearing, for example, people hung an effigy of a monkey in a noose with a sign reading "Hang the Nigger!!" At the time of the trial, jurors were confronted by graffiti declaring "Die Kevin Cooper" and "Kevin Cooper Must Be Hanged". Kevin Cooper pleaded not guilty - the jury deliberated for seven days before convicting him - and he has maintained his innocence since then. Since Governor Schwarzenegger denied clemency in 2004, more evidence supporting Kevin Cooper's claim of innocence has emerged, including for example, testimony from three witnesses who say they saw three white men near the crime scene on the night of the murders with blood on them.
In 2007, Judge Margaret McKeown was the member of the Ninth Circuit's three-judge panel who indicated that she was upholding the District Court's 2005 ruling despite her serious concerns. She wrote: "Significant evidence bearing on Cooper's guilt has been lost, destroyed or left unpursued, including, for example, blood-covered coveralls belonging to a potential suspect who was a convicted murderer, and a bloody t-shirt, discovered alongside the road near the crime scene. The managing criminologist in charge of the evidence used to establish Cooper's guilt at trial was, as it turns out, a heroin addict, and was fired for stealing drugs seized by the police. Countless other alleged problems with the handling and disclosure of evidence and the integrity of the forensic testing and investigation undermine confidence in the evidence". She continued that "despite the presence of serious questions as to the integrity of the investigation and evidence supporting the conviction, we are constrained by the requirements of the Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act of 1996 (AEDPA)". Judge McKeown wrote that "the habeas process does not account for lingering doubt or new evidence that cannot leap the clear and convincing hurdle of AEDPA. Instead, we are left with a situation in which confidence in the blood sample is murky at best, and lost, destroyed or tampered evidence cannot be factored into the final analysis of doubt. The result is wholly discomforting, but one that the law demands".
Even if it is correct that the AEDPA demands this result, the power of executive clemency is not so confined. Last September, for example, the governor of Ohio commuted Kevin Keith's death sentence because of doubts about his guilt even though his death sentence had been upheld on appeal (see http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/079/2010/en). Governor Ted Strickland said that despite circumstantial evidence linking the condemned man to the crime, "many legitimate questions have been raised regarding the evidence in support of the conviction and the investigation which led to it. In particular, Mr Keith's conviction relied upon the linking of certain eyewitness testimony with certain forensic evidence about which important questions have been raised. I also find the absence of a full investigation of other credible suspects troubling." The same could be said in the case of Kevin Cooper, whose lawyer is asking Governor Schwarzenegger to commute the death sentence before he leaves office on 2 January 2011. While Kevin Cooper does not yet have an execution date, it is likely that one will be set, perhaps early in 2011.
More than 130 people have been released from death rows on grounds of innocence in the USA since 1976. At the original trial in each case, the defendant had been found guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. It is clear beyond any dispute that the USA's criminal justice system is capable of making mistakes. International safeguards require that the death penalty not be imposed if guilt is not "based upon clear and convincing evidence leaving no room for an alternative explanation of the facts". Amnesty International opposes all executions regardless of the seriousness of the crime or the guilt or innocence of the condemned.
California has the largest death row in the USA, with more than 700 prisoners under sentence of death out of a national total of some 3,200. California accounts for 13 of the 1,234 executions in the USA since judicial killing resumed there in 1977. There have been 46 executions in the USA this year. The last execution in California was in January 2006.
RECOMMENDED ACTION: Please send appeals to arrive as quickly as possible:
- Acknowledging the seriousness of the crime for which Kevin Cooper was sentenced to death;
- Urging Governor Schwarzenegger to take account of the continuing doubts about Kevin Cooper's guilt, including as expressed by more than 10 federal judges since 2004, when executive clemency was last requested;
- Urging the Governor to commute Kevin Cooper's death sentence.
APPEALS TO:
Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger
State Capitol Building, Sacramento, CA 95814, USA
Fax: 1 916-558-3160
Email: governor@governor.ca.gov or via http://gov.ca.gov/interact#contact
Salutation : Dear Governor
PLEASE SEND APPEALS IMMEDIATELY.
Check with the AIUSA Urgent Action office if sending appeals after 2 January 2011.
Tip of the Month:
Write as soon as you can. Try to write as close as possible to the date a case is issued.
** POSTAGE RATES **
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Amnesty International is a worldwide grassroots movement that promotes and defends human rights.
This Urgent Action may be reposted if kept intact, including contact information and stop action date (if applicable). Thank you for your help with this appeal.
Urgent Action Network
Amnesty International USA
600 Pennsylvania Ave SE 5th fl
Washington DC 20003
Email: uan@aiusa.org
http://www.amnestyusa.org/urgent/
Phone: 202.509.8193
Fax: 202.675.8566
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Free the Children of Palestine!
Sign Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
Published by Al-Awda, Palestine Right to Return Coalition on Dec 16, 2010
Category: Children's Rights
Region: GLOBAL
Target: President Obama
Web site: http://www.al-awda.org
Background (Preamble):
According to Israeli police, 1200 Palestinian children have been arrested, interrogated and imprisoned in the occupied city of Jerusalem alone this year. The youngest of these children was seven-years old.
Children and teen-agers were often dragged out of their beds in the middle of the night, taken in handcuffs for questioning, threatened, humiliated and many were subjected to physical violence while under arrest as part of an ongoing campaign against the children of Palestine. Since the year 2000, more than 8000 have been arrested by Israel, and reports of mistreatment are commonplace.
Further, based on sworn affidavits collected in 2009 from 100 of these children, lawyers working in the occupied West Bank with Defense Children International, a Geneva-based non governmental organization, found that 69% were beaten and kicked, 49% were threatened, 14% were held in solitary confinement, 12% were threatened with sexual assault, including rape, and 32% were forced to sign confessions written in Hebrew, a language they do not understand.
Minors were often asked to give names and incriminate friends and relatives as a condition of their release. Such institutionalized and systematic mistreatment of Palestinian children by the state of Israel is a violation international law and specifically contravenes the Convention on the Rights of the Child to which Israel is supposedly a signatory.
Petition:
http://www.gopetition.com/petition/41467.html
We, the undersigned call on US President Obama to direct Israel to
1. Stop all the night raids and arrests of Palestinian Children forthwith.
2. Immediately release all Palestinian children detained in its prisons and detention centers.
3. End all forms of systematic and institutionalized abuse against all Palestinian children.
4. Implement the full restoration of Palestinian children's rights in accordance with international law including, but not limited to, their right to return to their homes of origin, to education, to medical and psychological care, and to freedom of movement and expression.
The US government, which supports Israel to the tune of billions of taxpayer dollars a year while most ordinary Americans are suffering in a very bad economy, is bound by its laws and international conventions to cut off all aid to Israel until it ends all of its violations of human rights and basic freedoms in a verifiable manner.
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"Secret diplomacy is a necessary tool for a propertied minority, which is compelled to deceive the majority in order to subject it to its interests."..."Publishing State Secrets" By Leon Trotsky
Documents on Soviet Policy, Trotsky, iii, 2 p. 64
November 22, 1917
http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/foreign-relations/1917/November/22.htm
FREE JULIAN ASSANGE! FREE BRADLEY MANNING! STOP THE FBI RAIDS NOW!
MONEY FOR HUMAN NEEDS NOT WAR!
To understand how much a trillion dollars is, consider looking at it in terms of time:
A million seconds would be about eleven-and-one-half days; a billion seconds would be 31 years; and a trillion seconds would be 31,000 years!
From the novel "A Dark Tide," by Andrew Gross
Now think of it in terms of U.S. war dollars and bankster bailouts!
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MIDDLE EAST CHILDREN'S ALLIANCE
Your Year-End Gift for the Children
Double your impact with this matching gift opportunity!
Dear Friend of the Children,
You may have recently received a letter from me via regular mail with a review of the important things you helped MECA accomplish for the children in 2010, along with a special Maia Project decal.
My letter to you also included an announcement of MECA's first ever matching gift offer. One of our most generous supporters will match all gifts received by December 31. 2010 to a total of $35,000.
So, whether you are a long time supporter, or giving for the first-time... Whether you can give $10 or $1,000... This is a unique opportunity to double the impact of your year-end gift!
Your contribution will be matched dollar for dollar, making it go twice as far so that MECA can:
* Install twenty more permanent drinking water units in Gaza schools though our Maia Project
* Continue our work with Playgrounds for Palestine to complete a community park in the besieged East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan, where violent Israeli settlers attack children and adults, Israeli police arrest the victims, and the city conducts "administrative demolitions" of Palestinian homes.
* Send a large medical aid shipment to Gaza.
* Renew support for "Let the Children Play and Heal," a program in Gaza to help children cope with trauma and grief through arts programs, referrals to therapists, educational materials for families and training for mothers.
Your support for the Middle East Children's Alliance's delivers real, often life-saving, help. And it does more than that. It sends a message of hope and solidarity to Palestine-showing the people that we are standing beside them as they struggle to bring about a better life for their children.
With warm regards,
Barbara Lubin
Founder and Director
P.S. Please give as much as you possible can, and please make your contribution now, so it will be doubled. Thank you so much.
P.S.S. If you didn't receive a MAIA Project decal in the mail or if you would like another one, please send an email message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "MAIA Project decal" in the subject line when you make your contribution.
To make a gift by mail send to:
MECA, 1101 8th Street, Berkley, CA 94710
To make a gift by phone, please call MECA's off at: 510-548-0542
To "GO PAPERLESS" and receive all your MECA communications by email, send a message to meca@mecaforpeace.org with "Paperless" in the subject line.
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For Immediate Release
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
12/2/2010
For more information: Joe Lombardo, 518-281-1968,
UNACpeace@gmail.org, NationalPeaceConference.org
Antiwar movement supports Wikileaks and calls for and independent, international investigation of the crimes that have been exposed. We call for the release of Bradley Manning and the end to the harassment of Julian Assange.
The United National Antiwar Committee (UNAC) calls for the release of Bradley Manning who is awaiting trial accused of leaking the material to Wikileaks that has been released over the past several months. We also call for an end to the harassment of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks and we call for an independent, international investigation of the illegal activity exposed through the material released by Wikileaks.
Before sending the material to Wikileaks, Bradley Manning tried to get his superiors in the military to do something about what he understood to be clear violations of international law. His superiors told him to keep quiet so Manning did the right thing; he exposed the illegal activity to the world.
The Afghan material leaked earlier shows military higher-ups telling soldiers to kill enemy combatants who were trying to surrender. The Iraq Wikileaks video from 2007 shows the US military killing civilians and news reporters from a helicopter while laughing about it. The widespread corruption among U.S. allies has been exposed by the most recent leaks of diplomatic cables. Yet, instead of calling for change in these policies, we hear only a call to suppress further leaks.
At the national antiwar conference held in Albany in July, 2010, at which UNAC was founded, we heard from Ethan McCord, one of the soldiers on the ground during the helicopter attack on the civilians in Iraq exposed by Wikileaks (see: http://www.mediasanctuary.org/movie/1810 ). He talked about removing wounded children from a civilian vehicle that the US military had shot up. It affected him so powerfully that he and another soldier who witnessed the massacre wrote a letter of apology to the families of the civilians who were killed.
We ask why this material was classified in the first place. There were no state secrets in the material, only evidence of illegal and immoral activity by the US military, the US government and its allies. To try to cover this up by classifying the material is a violation of our right to know the truth about these wars. In this respect, Bradley Manning and Julian Assange should be held up as heroes, not hounded for exposing the truth.
UNAC calls for an end to the illegal and immoral policies exposed by Wikileaks and an immediate end to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and an end to threats against Iran and North Korea.
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Courage to Resist needs your support
By Jeff Paterson, Courage to Resist.
It's been quite a ride the last four months since we took up the defense of accused WikiLeaks whistle-blower Bradley Manning. Since then, we helped form the Bradley Manning Support Network, established a defense fund, and have already paid over half of Bradley's total $100,000 in estimated legal expenses.
Now, I'm asking for your support of Courage to Resist so that we can continue to support not only Bradley, but the scores of other troops who are coming into conflict with military authorities due to reasons of conscience.
Please donate today:
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
"Soldiers sworn oath is to defend and support the Constitution. Bradley Manning has been defending and supporting our Constitution."
-Dan Ellsberg, Pentagon Papers whistle-blower
Iraq War over? Afghanistan occupation winding down? Not from what we see. Please take a look at, "Soldier Jeff Hanks refuses deployment, seeks PTSD help" in our December newsletter. Jeff's situation is not isolated. Actually, his story is only unique in that he has chosen to share it with us in the hopes that it may result in some change. Jeff's case also illustrates the importance of Iraq Veterans Against the War's new "Operation Recovery" campaign which calls for an end to the deployment of traumatized troops.
Most of the folks who call us for help continue to be effected by Stoploss, a program that involuntarily extends enlistments (despite Army promises of its demise), or the Individual Ready Reserve which recalls thousands of former Soldiers and Marines quarterly from civilian life.
Another example of our efforts is Kyle Wesolowski. After returning from Iraq, Kyle submitted an application for a conscientious objector discharge based on his Buddhist faith. Kyle explains, "My experience of physical threats, religious persecution, and general abuse seems to speak of a system that appears to be broken.... It appears that I have no other recourse but to now refuse all duties that prepare myself for war or aid in any way shape or form to other soldiers in conditioning them to go to war." We believe he shouldn't have to walk this path alone.
Sincerely,
Jeff Paterson
Project Director, Courage to Resist
First US military service member to refuse to fight in Iraq
Please donate today.
https://co.clickandpledge.com/sp/d1/default.aspx?wid=38590
P.S. I'm asking that you consider a contribution of $50 or more, or possibly becoming a sustainer at $15 a month. Of course, now is also a perfect time to make a end of year tax-deductible donation. Thanks again for your support!
Please click here to forward this to a friend who might
also be interested in supporting GI resisters.
http://ymlp.com/forward.php?id=lS3tR&e=bonnieweinstein@yahoo.com
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Add your name! We stand with Bradley Manning.
"We stand for truth, for government transparency, and for an end to our tax-dollars funding endless occupation abroad... We stand with accused whistle-blower US Army Pfc. Bradley Manning."
Dear All,
The Bradley Manning Support Network and Courage to Resist are launching a new campaign, and we wanted to give you a chance to be among the first to add your name to this international effort. If you sign the letter online, we'll print out and mail two letters to Army officials on your behalf. With your permission, we may also use your name on the online petition and in upcoming media ads.
Read the complete public letter and add your name at:
http://standwithbrad.org/
Courage to Resist (http://couragetoresist.org)
on behalf of the Bradley Manning Support Network (http://bradleymanning.org)
484 Lake Park Ave #41, Oakland CA 94610
510-488-3559
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Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
Dear Friend,
On Friday, September 24th, the FBI raided homes in Chicago and Minneapolis, and turned the Anti-War Committee office upside down. We were shocked. Our response was strong however and we jumped into action holding emergency protests. When the FBI seized activists' personal computers, cell phones, and papers claiming they were investigating "material support for terrorism", they had no idea there would be such an outpouring of support from the anti-war movement across this country! Over 61 cities protested, with crowds of 500 in Minneapolis and Chicago. Activists distributed 12,000 leaflets at the One Nation Rally in Washington D.C. Supporters made thousands of calls to President Obama and Attorney General Eric Holder. Solidarity statements from community organizations, unions, and other groups come in every day. By organizing against the attacks, the movement grows stronger.
At the same time, trusted lawyers stepped up to form a legal team and mount a defense. All fourteen activists signed letters refusing to testify. So Assistant U.S. Attorney Brandon Fox withdrew the subpoenas, but this is far from over. In fact, the repression is just starting. The FBI continues to question activists at their homes and work places. The U.S. government is trying to put people in jail for anti-war and international solidarity activism and there is no indication they are backing off. The U.S. Attorney has many options and a lot of power-he may re-issue subpoenas, attempt to force people to testify under threat of imprisonment, or make arrests.
To be successful in pushing back this attack, we need your donation. We need you to make substantial contributions like $1000, $500, and $200. We understand many of you are like us, and can only afford $50, $20, or $10, but we ask you to dig deep. The legal bills can easily run into the hundreds of thousands. We are all united to defend a movement for peace and justice that seeks friendship with people in other countries. These fourteen anti-war activists have done nothing wrong, yet their freedom is at stake.
It is essential that we defend our sisters and brothers who are facing FBI repression and the Grand Jury process. With each of your contributions, the movement grows stronger.
Please make a donation today at stopfbi.net (PayPal) on the right side of your screen. Also you can write to:
Committee to Stop FBI Repression
P.O. Box 14183
Minneapolis, MN 55414
This is a critical time for us to stand together, defend free speech, and defend those who help to organize for peace and justice, both at home and abroad!
Thank you for your generosity! Tom Burke
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Please sign the petition to stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal and
and forward it to all your lists.
"Mumia Abu-Jamal and The Global Abolition of the Death Penalty"
http://www.petitiononline.com/Mumialaw/petition.html
(A Life In the Balance - The Case of Mumia Abu-Jamal, at 34, Amnesty Int'l, 2000; www. Amnesty.org/en/library/info/AMR51/001/2000.)
[Note: This petition is approved by Mumia Abu-Jamal and his lead attorney, Robert R. Bryan, San Francisco (E-mail: MumiaLegalDefense@gmail.com; Website: www.MumiaLegalDefense.org).]
Committee To Save Mumia Abu-Jamal
P.O. Box 2012
New York, NY 10159-2012
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Short Video About Al-Awda's Work
The following link is to a short video which provides an overview of Al-Awda's work since the founding of our organization in 2000. This video was first shown on Saturday May 23, 2009 at the fundraising banquet of the 7th Annual Int'l Al-Awda Convention in Anaheim California. It was produced from footage collected over the past nine years.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTiAkbB5uC0&eurl
Support Al-Awda, a Great Organization and Cause!
Al-Awda, The Palestine Right to Return Coalition, depends on your financial support to carry out its work.
To submit your tax-deductible donation to support our work, go to
http://www.al-awda.org/donate.html and follow the simple instructions.
Thank you for your generosity!
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COURAGE TO RESIST!
Support the troops who refuse to fight!
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/
Donate:
http://www.couragetoresist.org/x/content/view/21/57/
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D. ARTICLES IN FULL
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1) Bernanke Expects a 'Moderately Stronger' Recovery
"'Very low inflation increases the risk that new adverse shocks could push the economy into deflation,' Mr. Bernanke said. Deflation typically means very slow growth in wages and incomes and is associated with reductions in living standards."
By SEWELL CHAN
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/economy/08fed.html?hp
2) The Texas Omen
By PAUL KRUGMAN
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/07krugman.html?hp
3) Failure in the Gulf
NYT Editorial
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/07fri1.html?hp
4) Jailed Sisters Released for Organ Transplant
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/us/08sisters.html?hp
5) U.S. Sends Warning to People Named in Cable Leaks
By MARK LANDLER and SCOTT SHANE
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/world/07wiki.html?hp
6) Germans Fear Dioxin Contamination at 4,700 Farms
By JUDY DEMPSEY
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/world/europe/08dioxin.html?ref=world
7) More Than 1,000 Extra Marines To Be Deployed in Afghanistan
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/world/asia/07troops.html?ref=world
8) WikiLeaks Cables Make Appearance in a Tale of Sunken Treasure and Nazi Theft
By KIM SEVERSON and ROBBIE BROWN
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07treasure.html?ref=world
9) Georgia Facing a Hard Choice on Free Tuition
By KIM SEVERSON
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07hope.html?ref=education
10) Private Sector Improves Jobs Picture Only Slightly
"The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent last month from 9.8 percent, its lowest rate since July 2009, the department said in its monthly report. But the figures also showed that the civilian labor force declined by 260,000 in December, as many Americans stopped applying for jobs. 'It is certainly a disappointment,' said Dan Greenhaus, the chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Company. 'The drop was more attributed to a decline in the number of unemployed people, rather than an increase in the number of employed people. There was not a surge in employment.'"
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/economy/08jobs.html?ref=business
11) Geithner Asks Congress to Raise U.S. Debt Limit Quickly
"A failure to increase the limit in time would force the Treasury to default on legal obligations and payments to bondholders here and abroad 'causing catastrophic damage to the economy,' Mr. Geithner said, threatening the dollar and stopping payments for a range of federal benefits, including military salaries, Social Security and Medicare."
By JACKIE CALMES
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/business/economy/07debt.html?ref=business
12) Financial Lobbyists Seek Softer Rules on Policing Fraud
By BEN PROTESS
January 7, 2011, 11:39 am
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/financial-lobbyists-seek-softer-rules-on-policing-fraud/?src=busln
13) 'Aflockalypse': Here's Why We Should Really Be Concerned About the Huge Bird and Fish Die-off
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on January 7, 2011, Printed on January 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149440/
14) 'Don't Repeal Health Law - Go Beyond it to Single-Payer Medicare for All': Doctor's Group
Statement by Physicians for National Health Program
January 7, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/07-5
15) LA Oscar Grant protests also monitored by law enforcement
By Ali Winston
January 6, 2011
http://informant.kalwnews.org/2011/01/la-oscar-grant-protests-also-monitored-by-law-enforcement/
16) Misery With Plenty of Company
By BOB HERBERT
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=1&hp
17) New Charges of Georgia inmate beatings prompt calls for more access
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
http://charlene.blogs.finalcall.com/2011/01/new-charges-of-georgia-inmate-beatings.html
18) Tax Cuts From '70s Confront Brown Again in California
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
January 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/09calif.html?hp
19) U.S. Subpoenas Twitter Over WikiLeaks Supporters
By SCOTT SHANE and JOHN F. BURNS
January 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/world/09wiki.html?ref=world
20) Alaska Pipeline Shut Down After Leak Discovered
By REUTERS
January 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/01/09/us/news-us-oil-pipeline-alaska.html?ref=business
21) Profits are Booming. Why Aren't Jobs?
"American businesses reported that third-quarter profits in 2010 rose at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion, the steepest annual surge since officials began tracking such matters 60 years ago. It was the seventh consecutive quarter in which corporate profits climbed."
By MICHAEL POWELL
January 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/weekinreview/09powell.html?ref=business
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1) Bernanke Expects a 'Moderately Stronger' Recovery
"'Very low inflation increases the risk that new adverse shocks could push the economy into deflation,' Mr. Bernanke said. Deflation typically means very slow growth in wages and incomes and is associated with reductions in living standards."
By SEWELL CHAN
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/economy/08fed.html?hp
The Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, told senators on Friday that he expected the recovery to be "moderately stronger" this year. He also defended the central bank's $600 billion program to stimulate the economy by buying government bonds, and urged Congress to put a credible plan in place to reduce the federal deficit.
"We have seen increased evidence that a self-sustaining recovery in consumer and business spending may be taking hold," Mr. Bernanke told the Senate Budget Committee, in his first testimony to the new Congress. Consumer spending and business investment in new equipment and software are on the rise, he said, but the housing and labor markets remain depressed.
Mr. Bernanke spoke an hour after the Labor Department reported that unemployment had fallen to 9.4 percent, with nonfarm payroll growth that was less than most economists had anticipated. The job market has "improved only modestly at best," and "considerable time will likely be required before the unemployment rate has returned to a more normal level," he said.
In a detailed explanation of the Fed's Nov. 3 decision to resume quantitative easing - a strategy of buying Treasury securities to lower long-term interest rates - Mr. Bernanke emphasized that inflation is expected to be at "historically low levels for some time."
"Very low inflation increases the risk that new adverse shocks could push the economy into deflation," Mr. Bernanke said. Deflation typically means very slow growth in wages and incomes and is associated with reductions in living standards.
Mr. Bernanke also said the new, $600 billion round of asset purchases - which is to be carried out through June but is subject to periodic examination - was not dissimilar to conventional monetary policy, which the Fed can no longer use because the overnight interest rate it controls has already been nearly zero since December 2008.
"Conventional monetary policy works by changing market expectations for the future path of short-term interest rates, which, in turn, influences the current level of longer-term interest rates and other financial conditions," Mr. Bernanke said. "These changes in financial conditions then affect household and business spending. Securities purchases by the Federal Reserve put downward pressure directly on longer-term interest rates by reducing the stock of longer-term securities held by private investors."
Mr. Bernanke said the Fed remained "unwaveringly committed to price stability" and to the Fed's long-term, implicit inflation target of "2 percent or a bit less."
The chairman also offered a more detailed argument about the need for fiscal reform than he has in the past.
"It is widely understood that the federal government is on an unsustainable fiscal path," he said. "Yet, as a nation, we have done little to address this critical threat to our economy. Doing nothing will not be an option indefinitely; the longer we wait to act, the greater the risks and the more wrenching the inevitable changes to the budget will be."
Mr. Bernanke endorsed the findings of President Obama's fiscal commission, which urged the development of a credible plan for reducing structural deficits, but did not advocate sharp, immediate reductions in spending that could threaten the recovery.
He said growth was affected "not only by the levels of taxes and spending, but also by their composition and structure." He urged Congress, in working to reduce the deficit, to also enhance the economy's long-run growth potential - "for example, by encouraging investment in physical and human capital, by promoting research and development, by providing necessary public infrastructure, and by reducing disincentives to work and to save."
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2) The Texas Omen
By PAUL KRUGMAN
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/07krugman.html?hp
These are tough times for state governments. Huge deficits loom almost everywhere, from California to New York, from New Jersey to Texas.
Wait - Texas? Wasn't Texas supposed to be thriving even as the rest of America suffered? Didn't its governor declare, during his re-election campaign, that "we have billions in surplus"? Yes, it was, and yes, he did. But reality has now intruded, in the form of a deficit expected to run as high as $25 billion over the next two years.
And that reality has implications for the nation as a whole. For Texas is where the modern conservative theory of budgeting - the belief that you should never raise taxes under any circumstances, that you can always balance the budget by cutting wasteful spending - has been implemented most completely. If the theory can't make it there, it can't make it anywhere.
How bad is the Texas deficit? Comparing budget crises among states is tricky, for technical reasons. Still, data from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities suggest that the Texas budget gap is worse than New York's, about as bad as California's, but not quite up to New Jersey levels.
The point, however, is that just the other day Texas was being touted as a role model (and still is by commentators who haven't been keeping up with the news). It was the state the recession supposedly passed by, thanks to its low taxes and business-friendly policies. Its governor boasted that its budget was in good shape thanks to his "tough conservative decisions."
Oh, and at a time when there's a full-court press on to demonize public-sector unions as the source of all our woes, Texas is nearly demon-free: less than 20 percent of public-sector workers there are covered by union contracts, compared with almost 75 percent in New York.
So what happened to the "Texas miracle" many people were talking about even a few months ago?
Part of the answer is that reports of a recession-proof state were greatly exaggerated. It's true that Texas job losses haven't been as severe as those in the nation as a whole since the recession began in 2007. But Texas has a rapidly growing population - largely, suggests Harvard's Edward Glaeser, because its liberal land-use and zoning policies have kept housing cheap. There's nothing wrong with that; but given that rising population, Texas needs to create jobs more rapidly than the rest of the country just to keep up with a growing work force.
And when you look at unemployment, Texas doesn't seem particularly special: its unemployment rate is below the national average, thanks in part to high oil prices, but it's about the same as the unemployment rate in New York or Massachusetts.
What about the budget? The truth is that the Texas state government has relied for years on smoke and mirrors to create the illusion of sound finances in the face of a serious "structural" budget deficit - that is, a deficit that persists even when the economy is doing well. When the recession struck, hitting revenue in Texas just as it did everywhere else, that illusion was bound to collapse.
The only thing that let Gov. Rick Perry get away, temporarily, with claims of a surplus was the fact that Texas enacts budgets only once every two years, and the last budget was put in place before the depth of the economic downturn was clear. Now the next budget must be passed - and Texas may have a $25 billion hole to fill. Now what?
Given the complete dominance of conservative ideology in Texas politics, tax increases are out of the question. So it has to be spending cuts.
Yet Mr. Perry wasn't lying about those "tough conservative decisions": Texas has indeed taken a hard, you might say brutal, line toward its most vulnerable citizens. Among the states, Texas ranks near the bottom in education spending per pupil, while leading the nation in the percentage of residents without health insurance. It's hard to imagine what will happen if the state tries to eliminate its huge deficit purely through further cuts.
I don't know how the mess in Texas will end up being resolved. But the signs don't look good, either for the state or for the nation.
Right now, triumphant conservatives in Washington are declaring that they can cut taxes and still balance the budget by slashing spending. Yet they haven't been able to do that even in Texas, which is willing both to impose great pain (by its stinginess on health care) and to shortchange the future (by neglecting education). How are they supposed to pull it off nationally, especially when the incoming Republicans have declared Medicare, Social Security and defense off limits?
People used to say that the future happens first in California, but these days what happens in Texas is probably a better omen. And what we're seeing right now is a future that doesn't work.
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3) Failure in the Gulf
NYT Editorial
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/opinion/07fri1.html?hp
The document released Wednesday by the presidential commission investigating last spring's oil blowout in the Gulf of Mexico is a riveting and chilling indictment of "systemic failures" throughout the oil business and of the federal agencies that allowed themselves to be captured by the people they were supposed to regulate.
The commission will offer specific recommendations for reform in its full report next Tuesday. But the chapter it decided to release early is, by itself, a powerful summons to the Obama administration to press rapidly forward with stronger regulations, and to the industry as a whole to behave far more responsibly than it has.
Another tragedy like the one in the Gulf of Mexico could well occur, the report suggests, unless there is "significant reform in both industry practices and government policies."
The panel traced the blowout to three main factors:
MANAGERIAL FOUL-UPS: The most significant failure and "root cause" of the blowout was a seemingly endless series of fateful missteps and oversights by BP and its partners - Transocean and Halliburton - that, in retrospect, could have been avoided. These decisions included not installing enough devices to stabilize the well, not waiting for the results of tests on the foam used to seal the well, and ignoring the results of an important pressure test. Taken together, these and other blunders allowed gases to enter the well and rise with explosive and ultimately disastrous force to the drilling rig.
SYSTEMIC FAILURE: Though BP in particular has been accused of putting profit before safety, the report avoided linking any individual decision to cost considerations. Even so, BP and its partners repeatedly chose the riskier, speedier course instead of a slower and safer alternative. As Bob Graham, the commission co-chairman, noted in a separate statement, "This disaster likely would not have happened had the companies involved been guided by an unrelenting commitment to safety first."
The report further asserted that this risk-taking was not unique to BP or its partners in the well, that the blowout was "not the product of a series of aberrational decisions" made by a rogue company, but, instead, reflected an industrywide proclivity for risky behavior. "Do we have a single company, BP, that blundered with fatal consequences," asked the other co-chairman, William Reilly, "or a more pervasive problem of a complacent industry?" Sadly, Mr. Reilly said, it is the latter.
REGULATORY WEAKNESS: As expected, the panel took federal regulators in the old Minerals Management Service to task for a range of mistakes, like rubber-stamping drilling permits and failing to oversee operations on the rig. These failures are hardly new. For years, the service has had neither the will nor the resources to police the industry.
Since the blowout, the Obama administration has reorganized the regulatory apparatus to give it greater independence. It has also issued and is now enforcing specific safety regulations and increased surveillance on individual rigs. All this is welcome, but the administration has a long way to go. What is at issue here is nothing less than remaking the culture of an entire industry.
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4) Jailed Sisters Released for Organ Transplant
By TIMOTHY WILLIAMS
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/us/08sisters.html?hp
Two Mississippi sisters who have been imprisoned for 16 years were released on Friday morning on the condition that the younger sibling donate a kidney to her older sister, whose organs are failing.
Jamie and Gladys Scott walked out of the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl, Miss. at just after 8 a.m. Central time Friday morning, and were greeted by their mother, their children and throngs of reporters.
The case of the Scott sisters attracted widespread attention after Gov. Haley Barbour suspended their double life sentences last month with the stipulation that Gladys Scott, 36, give one of her kidneys to Jamie Scott, 38.
The kidney donation was the sisters' idea, and is supported by the N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights organizations. But the unusual nature of the arrangement has been criticized by some medical ethicists.
Legal experts said that suspending a prison sentence contingent on an organ donation is highly unusual and may be unprecedented.
Jamie Scott requires dialysis treatment at least three times a week, and her health has been failing during the past few months.
The women plan to live in Pensacola, Fla., with their mother and their children. Jamie Scott has three children; Gladys Scott has two.
The Scotts were arrested on Christmas Eve 1993, when Jamie was 21 and Gladys 19, and they were convicted the following year on charges that they led two men into an ambush, during which the men were robbed of about $11, according to the trial transcript.
Three boys, aged 14 to 18 at the time, were also convicted in the case; they served their sentences and were released from custody years ago, Mississippi officials said. The sisters have denied playing any role in the crime.
After years of unsuccessful efforts by their family and friends to get the sisters released based on inconsistencies in testimony during the trial, Jamie Scott's kidney failure last year led to a new grassroots campaign to free them. The effort on behalf of the sisters, who are black, was taken up by African American-themed Internet sites, by the N.A.A.C.P. and by African American politicians in Mississippi.
After mulling over the matter for several months, Gov. Barbour announced in late December that he would not pardon the sisters, but would instead indefinitely suspend their sentences.
Gov. Barbour said he had acted in part out of concern over Jamie Scott's health, but also to relieve the state of the cost of her dialysis treatment, approximately $200,000 a year.
"The Mississippi Department of Corrections believes the sisters no longer pose a threat to society," Mr. Barbour said in a Dec. 29 statement. "Their incarceration is no longer necessary for public safety or rehabilitation, and Jamie Scott's medical condition creates a substantial cost to the state of Mississippi."
The sisters will be on parole for the rest of their lives, the sisters' attorneys said.
Many questions remain unanswered, including who will pay for the kidney transplant operation. The sisters' advocates say the family cannot afford the procedure on their own and that it is unclear whether they will qualify for Medicaid.
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5) U.S. Sends Warning to People Named in Cable Leaks
By MARK LANDLER and SCOTT SHANE
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/world/07wiki.html?hp
WASHINGTON - The State Department is warning hundreds of human rights activists, foreign government officials and businesspeople identified in leaked diplomatic cables of potential threats to their safety and has moved a handful of them to safer locations, administration officials said Thursday.
The operation, which involves a team of 30 in Washington and embassies from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, reflects the administration's fear that the disclosure of cables obtained by the organization WikiLeaks has damaged American interests by exposing foreigners who supply valuable information to the United States.
Administration officials said they were not aware of anyone who has been attacked or imprisoned as a direct result of information in the 2,700 cables that have been made public to date by WikiLeaks, The New York Times and several other publications, many with some names removed. But they caution that many dissidents are under constant harassment from their governments, so it is difficult to be certain of the cause of actions against them.
The officials declined to discuss details about people contacted by the State Department in recent weeks, saying only that a few were relocated within their home countries and that a few others were moved abroad.
The State Department is mainly concerned about the cables that have yet to be published or posted on Web sites - nearly 99 percent of the archive of 251,287 cables obtained by WikiLeaks. With cables continuing to trickle out, they said, protecting those identified will be a complex, delicate and long-term undertaking. The State Department said it had combed through a majority of the quarter-million cables and distributed many to embassies for review by diplomats there.
"We feel responsible for doing everything possible to protect these people," said Michael H. Posner, the assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, who is overseeing the effort. "We're taking it extremely seriously."
Contrary to the administration's initial fears, the fallout from the cables on the diplomatic corps itself has been manageable. The most visible casualty so far could be Gene A. Cretz, the ambassador to Libya, who was recalled from his post last month after his name appeared on a cable describing peculiar personal habits of the Libyan leader, Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi. While no decision has been made on Mr. Cretz's future, officials said he was unlikely to return to Tripoli. In addition, one midlevel diplomat has been moved from his post in an undisclosed country.
But other senior diplomats initially considered at risk - for example, the ambassador to Russia, John R. Beyrle, whose name was on cables critical of Prime Minister Vladimir V. Putin - appeared to have weathered the disclosures.
There is anecdotal evidence that the disclosure of the cables has chilled daily contacts between human rights activists and diplomats. An American diplomat in Central Asia said recently that one Iranian contact, who met him on periodic trips outside Iran, told him he would no longer speak to him. Sarah Holewinski, executive director of the Campaign for Innocent Victims in Conflict, said people in Afghanistan and Pakistan had become more reluctant to speak to human rights investigators for fear that what they said might be made public.
WikiLeaks came under fire from human rights organizations last July, after it released a large number of documents about the war in Afghanistan without removing the names of Afghan citizens who had assisted the American military. When it later released documents about the Iraq war, the group stripped names from the documents.
A Pentagon spokesman, Maj. Chris Perrine, said Thursday that the military was not aware of any confirmed case of harm to anyone as a result of being named in the Afghan war documents. But he noted that the Taliban had said it would study the WikiLeaks documents to punish collaborators with the Americans.
State Department officials believe that a wide range of foreigners who have spoken candidly to American diplomats could be at risk if publicly identified. For example, a businessman who spoke about official corruption, a gay person in a society intolerant of homosexuality or a high-ranking government official who criticized his bosses could face severe reprisals, the officials said.
Human rights advocates share the State Department's concern that many people could be at risk if cables become public without careful redaction. "There are definitely people named in the cables who would be very much endangered," said Tom Malinowski, Washington director for Human Rights Watch.
In one case, Mr. Malinowski said, the State Department asked Human Rights Watch to inform a person in a Middle Eastern country that his exchanges with American diplomats had been reported in a cable.
In addition to The Times, The Guardian, Le Monde, El País and Der Spiegel have had the entire cable database for several months. The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten said last month that it had obtained the entire collection, and newspapers in several other countries have obtained a selection of cables relating to their regions.
WikiLeaks's founder, Julian Assange, has said the group will continue to release additional cables on its own Web site as well, though to date it has moved cautiously and has reproduced the redactions made by newspapers publishing the cables.
Government officials are also worried that foreign intelligence services may be trying to acquire the cable collection, a development that would heighten concerns about the safety of those named in the documents.
For human rights activists in this country, disclosures by WikiLeaks, which was founded in 2006, have been a decidedly mixed development. Amnesty International gave WikiLeaks an award in 2009 for its role in revealing human rights violations in Kenya. Human Rights Watch wrote to President Obama last month to urge the administration not to pursue a prosecution of WikiLeaks or Mr. Assange.
But they are concerned that the cables could inflict their own kind of collateral damage, either by endangering diplomats' sources or discouraging witnesses and victims of abuses from speaking to foreign supporters.
Sam Zarifi, director of Amnesty International's operations in Asia, said the cables had provided valuable "empirical information" on abuses in several countries. "This is a new way to distribute information," Mr. Zarifi said. "We just want to make sure it has the same safeguards as traditional journalism."
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6) Germans Fear Dioxin Contamination at 4,700 Farms
By JUDY DEMPSEY
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/world/europe/08dioxin.html?ref=world
BERLIN - German agriculture and consumer affairs officials have halted sales from more than 4,700 farms where feed for chickens may have been contaminated by dioxin.
Gerd Sonnleitner, president of the German Farmers' Association, said on Friday that the estimated loss to the industry was $52 million to $70 million a week.
The order, which involves five states but mainly Lower Saxony, has led to the withdrawal from the market of millions of eggs as prosecutors investigate how a rapeseed oil processed by a company that supplied the feed came to be contaminated by dioxin. The substance can cause severe health problems in humans, including cancer and miscarriages.
Since the scare became public at the beginning of this week, up to 3,000 tons of an additive to poultry feed have been found to contain traces of dioxin, according to a report from the German Agriculture Ministry. In a country where scares concerning food safety can sometimes lead to hysteria or panic buying, regional authorities and the federal government moved quickly to reassure the public, saying that the level of dioxin would be too low to pose health risks.
There were fears that the health scare may have gone beyond Germany's borders to the Netherlands. According to Holger Eichele, a spokesman for the German Agricultural and Consumer Protection Ministry, a total of 136,000 eggs were delivered to a Dutch firm. "The company has already been informed about the problem and so has the European Commission, " Mr. Eichele said. "We are not aware of any other deliveries to other E.U. member states."
Ms. Aigner said the federal and local authorities would consider whether regulations on animal feed needed tightening. After speaking to John Dali, the European Union's health commissioner Thursday evening, Ms. Aigner called for stricter regulation on animal feed to protect consumers and farmers throughout the bloc.
"In the coming weeks, I will explore with our E.U. partners and stakeholders ways to further strengthen our monitoring processes of dioxin in feed," Mr. Dali said in a statement.
The scare began when Harles and Jentzsch, a German firm in the northern state of Schleswig-Holstein, allegedly supplied up to 3,000 tons of contaminated fatty acids meant for industrial use to animal feed producers.
The company says the contamination of its animal feed with dioxin-laced industrial fat was an isolated case and that they notified the authorities themselves. The feed was delivered mostly to hog and poultry farms, and eggs from some of the suspect farms were exported to the Netherlands. As a result, around 8,000 chickens from German farms were culled.
The German Farmers' Association has called for the feed producers to compensate farmers for their losses. "Whoever causes the damages should also pay for them," the secretary general of the association, Helmut Born, told the German daily newspaper Der Tagesspiegel.
Ms. Aigner said the company responsible for the contamination would have to pay the consequences. "Whoever puts the existence of hundreds of companies and the health of consumers at risk must be held accountable," she said.
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7) More Than 1,000 Extra Marines To Be Deployed in Afghanistan
By ELISABETH BUMILLER
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/world/asia/07troops.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - The United States will send more than 1,000 additional Marines to Afghanistan this month to try to solidify progress in the south before troop reductions begin in July, American military officials said Thursday.
The majority of the forces will be sent to Helmand Province, where 20,000 Marines have made gains against the Taliban but where fighting remains intense in insurgent strongholds like Sangin. American commanders are under pressure to quell the violence and sustain their gains in the first six months of 2011, when the White House will assess whether a troop increase for the nearly decade-old war is working.
Officials at the Florida-based United States Central Command, which has responsibility for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, said that the Marines were being sent to take advantage of what is traditionally a winter hiatus for the Taliban and to try to set conditions for the fighting season that begins in the spring.
Maj. Gen. Richard P. Mills, the commander of the 20,000 Marines in Helmand, said in a statement that the intent was to overwhelm the enemy "with an increased operational tempo that he'll be unable to match."
The 1,000-plus Marines are part of the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, a reserve force currently deployed in the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea. Central Command officials said the Marines would go to Afghanistan for about three months. The rest of the expeditionary unit will remain aboard ship for other contingencies, military officials said.
Currently there are about 100,000 United States troops in Afghanistan. In December 2009, President Obama announced that he was sending 30,000 additional troops there and at the same time said the United States would begin to withdraw troops from Afghanistan in July 2011.
Since then, the Obama administration has tried to shift focus away from the July 2011 date - military commanders said the deadline was encouraging insurgents to bide their time until the United States withdrew - to a new date of 2014 as the end of American combat operations in Afghanistan.
It is unclear what effect, if any, the additional Marines will have on the debate on the number of forces to be withdrawn in July.
"The coming debate is bigger than this," said Michael E. O'Hanlon, a military analyst and senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. "The issue will be, do we reduce in the second half of the year by 1,000, 5,000 or 20,000?"
During a visit to Afghanistan last month, Mr. Obama told American troops that they were "making important progress" and breaking the Taliban's momentum, but others in Washington and Kabul have been more skeptical about the gains and whether they can be sustained once the Americans leave.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: January 6, 2011
An earlier version of this article misidentified the Afghan province where the United States is sending additional Marines. Most will go to Helmand Province, not Kandahar Province.
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8) WikiLeaks Cables Make Appearance in a Tale of Sunken Treasure and Nazi Theft
By KIM SEVERSON and ROBBIE BROWN
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07treasure.html?ref=world
ATLANTA - The latest twist in the WikiLeaks tale is a plot worthy of a Tom Clancy thriller.
It is a story of international intrigue starring millions of dollars in sunken treasure, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, the government of Spain and an Impressionist painting by Camille Pissarro of a rain-soaked Paris boulevard, believed to have been stolen by the Nazis.
Odyssey Marine Exploration, a Tampa, Fla., deep-sea treasure hunting company, is using classified cables from the State Department in its legal battle with Spain over who owns $500 million of gold and silver retrieved in 2007 from the wreckage of a Spanish galleon off the coast of Portugal.
The cables, part of 250,000 classified documents released recently by WikiLeaks, contain communications between the Spanish cultural minister and the American ambassador to Spain. First published in The Guardian of London and El País of Madrid, they are shrouded in the careful language of international diplomacy.
But Odyssey says they show that the ambassador offered to assist Spain in the fight over the sunken treasure. In return, Odyssey says, Spain was to help get a Madrid museum to return the 1897 Pissarro painting, valued at as much as $20 million, to a California family that says it was illegally taken by Nazis in Germany.
Odyssey has been fighting with Spain over the treasure in the United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, in Atlanta. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. and the Justice Department have weighed in supporting Spain's claim.
But Odyssey says the federal government has had a secret motive for getting involved in the case. On Wednesday, lawyers for the company filed a motion asking that, based on the cables, the court strike the Justice Department filing and require the government to note its interests in the case.
"Based on the evidence available to us so far, we are quite concerned," said Greg Stemm, Odyssey's chief executive. "The WikiLeaks cables are opening a window into the inner workings of international diplomacy for the general public, and it isn't always pretty."
A State Department spokesman declined to comment Thursday on the legal issue. But William Barron, a lawyer in New York who is representing Spain in the painting case, denied that there was a secret agreement between the Spanish and American governments.
"These are two totally separate issues," he said. "Somebody is spinning this into a quid pro quo agreement, but the documents do not show that."
The case has divided local and federal politicians, with a delegation of four congressmen from Florida urging Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Holder to support the treasure hunters.
"I am disturbed by the actions of the State and Justice Departments," said Representative Gus Bilirakis, a Florida Republican. "These actions suggest that the U.S. government is ceding its sovereignty to foreign governments."
Technology experts say the case is the first of many that are likely to draw on the trove of secret information available in the cables. The WikiLeaks documents have primarily been studied by journalists and government experts, but also have application to businesses and private citizens.
Lisa Lynch, a professor of journalism at Concordia University in Montreal and an expert on the WikiLeak phenomena, said the cables contain a wealth of facts about governments, commerce and people involved in dealings with both.
"We've really only seen the first wave of fallout from the information," she said.
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9) Georgia Facing a Hard Choice on Free Tuition
By KIM SEVERSON
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/us/07hope.html?ref=education
ATHENS, Ga. - Students here at the University of Georgia have a name for some of the fancy cars parked in the lots around campus. They call them Hopemobiles. But there may soon be fewer of them.
The cars are gifts from parents who find themselves with extra cash because their children decided to take advantage of a cherished state perk - the Hope scholarship. The largest merit-based college scholarship program in the United States it offers any Georgia high school student with a B-average four years of free college tuition.
But the Hope scholarship program is about to be cut by a new governor and Legislature facing staggering financial troubles.
The lingering effects of the recession and the end of federal stimulus funds have sunk many states into a fiscal quagmire. The seriousness of the problem, and a growing concern over how much worse it might become, have many states struggling to find ways to trim services or raise revenues.
In Georgia, that means taking a slice out of the Hope scholarship.
When it was begun in 1993, the program was covered easily by Georgia's state lottery. Politicians enjoyed how happy it made middle-class constituents. Educators praised the way it improved SAT scores and lifted Georgia from the backwaters of higher education.
It was considered so innovative that 15 states copied it. And while the lottery-based scholarship programs in states like Tennessee are dipping into reserves to cover the costs, none have fiscal woes as big as Georgia's.
Part of it is the program's popularity. A majority of freshmen in Georgia have grades good enough to qualify for Hope, which covers tuition, some books and fees - but not housing costs - at any Georgia university or technical school.
And even though as many as two-thirds of Hope students let their college grades slip so much that they no longer qualify - "I've lost Hope," they joke when it happens - Georgia still gives away more financial aid per student than any other state. Since the program started, 1.3 million Georgia students have received a total of $5.6 billion in educational support. The program offers as much as $6,000 a year for some students.
But the program has become so popular it cannot sustain itself. Lottery sales, which by law can pay for only the Hope scholarship and a free prekindergarten program, will be short $243 million this fiscal year and as much as $317 million the next, according to state budget estimates.
Last year, lawmakers had to pull millions of dollars from the state's reserve fund just to cover the cost. But this year, there is nowhere to turn.
Like the other states that are facing the worst fiscal crisis in recent memory, Georgia heads into its legislative session next week staring at a budget deficit of as much as $2 billion. And that is after billions of dollars in cuts over the past two years that have reduced the state's spending power to $17.9 billion for fiscal year 2011.
But trim the program that for years has paid to educate the children of the most reliable voters in the state?
"Undoubtedly, this is, in every sense of the word, a very strongly ingrained entitlement for a certain segment of voters, and politicians are indeed reluctant to touch it," said Christopher Cornwell, a professor of economics at the University of Georgia, who has studied the effect of the Hope scholarship on the state, including an analysis of the positive impact the scholarship has had on car sales.
Politicians are hoping for mercy as they begin this month to make decisions that will surely have the parents of college-bound students scrambling to find new ways to pay for tuition.
"We trust and we hope the people in the state of Georgia understand the position we're in," said State Representative Len Walker, a Republican who leads the House Higher Education Committee.
They do and they don't.
Cathy Ottley, a part-time office manager, and her husband, a management consultant, are raising three children in Marietta, north of Atlanta. One is a sophomore at the University of Georgia, courtesy of the Hope scholarship. A daughter who is a high school senior had her heart set on the University of North Carolina but has come to see an in-state college as the practical way to go. And then there is the youngest, a high school freshman with a promising future in athletics. Without the scholarship, Ms. Ottley said, college for her children would be a stretch at best.
"This just gives you options," she said. "I don't have peace about kids just starting out at 22 with $200,000 in debt for their education."
Mr. Walker said no one was talking about cutting the program completely.
"It appears at this point that it will not be a 100 percent scholarship. It might be 90 percent. It might 80 percent," he said. But the cost of books and fees will most certainly be eliminated.
Other options include raising the required grade-point average, which would cut the number of students who qualify, or giving more to exceptional students and less to merely above-average performers.
"That would make it so much harder," said Myisha Price, a junior at Clayton State University in Atlanta, who relies on the scholarship and also works. "I don't go to clubs. I don't drink. I don't smoke and I don't party and it's already hard."
Another idea is to work economic need into the equation, though that idea does not have much support, both lawmakers and educators said.
The most likely plan, and one that Governor-elect Nathan Deal, a Republican, has indicated he supports, would be to create a flat rate for each student, regardless of the tuition bill.
At a cafeteria table here this week, a group of Hope recipients defended the program and debated a range of ideas to keep Hope alive, including raising taxes.
Allie McCullen, who is majoring in English and women's studies, is in her fourth year at Georgia. She is the only child of a single mother who in 2006 lost her job in the mortgage industry. Ms. McCullen pieces together her living expenses and extra book costs through a small grant and two jobs.
"If I didn't have it, I might not be able to attend at all," she said. "Or I would just be in such severe debt that I might not ever be able to get out of it."
If the scholarship ends or gets cut drastically, it could send the most promising students out of state and even end the era of new cars for incoming freshman.
Lauren Rice drives a Hopemobile (though, she concedes, it is only a Honda Civic). Her parents told her she could go to college anywhere. She was considering Auburn in Alabama. But her parents offered her what she called "the car incentive." That, plus the daunting out-of-state tuition helped her select the University of Georgia.
But without Hope, Ms. Rice's decision might have been different.
"If you're going to have a bill in-state anyway," she said, "then what does it matter?"
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10) Private Sector Improves Jobs Picture Only Slightly
"The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent last month from 9.8 percent, its lowest rate since July 2009, the department said in its monthly report. But the figures also showed that the civilian labor force declined by 260,000 in December, as many Americans stopped applying for jobs. 'It is certainly a disappointment,' said Dan Greenhaus, the chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Company. 'The drop was more attributed to a decline in the number of unemployed people, rather than an increase in the number of employed people. There was not a surge in employment.'"
By CHRISTINE HAUSER
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/business/economy/08jobs.html?ref=business
The United States economy ended the year by adding 103,000 jobs in December and with a lower unemployment rate, the Labor Department said Friday, but as thousands of Americans gave up looking for work, the numbers suggested that joblessness could continue to weigh on the recovery.
The unemployment rate fell to 9.4 percent last month from 9.8 percent, its lowest rate since July 2009, the department said in its monthly report. But the figures also showed that the civilian labor force declined by 260,000 in December, as many Americans stopped applying for jobs.
"It is certainly a disappointment," said Dan Greenhaus, the chief economic strategist for Miller Tabak & Company. "The drop was more attributed to a decline in the number of unemployed people, rather than an increase in the number of employed people. There was not a surge in employment."
"The economy is still working through the overhang left over from the recession," Mr. Greenhaus added. While the overall statistics showed that jobs were added, the monthly growth was not enough to significantly reduce the ranks of the unemployed or keep pace with people entering the work force. And the outlook remains bleak for many workers. More than 14.5 million people were out of work in December, among them 6.4 million who have been jobless for six months or longer.
As with previous months, all of December's gain - 113,000 jobs - came from private employers. Federal, state and local governments continued to shed jobs - cutting another 10,000 last month after trimming 8,000 in November, revised from 11,000 - mostly on the local level. States and municipalities dealing with tighter budgets may be faced with further cuts as they try to shrink their deficits.
The agency also revised estimates from the two earlier months, now saying that 210,000 jobs were created in October instead of 172,000, and 71,000 in November, instead of 39,000.
Jeffrey N. Kleintop, chief market strategist at LPL Financial, said the report was "not terrible" once revisions were taken into account.
"But there is no real job creation here," he said. "It just shows business leaders are just not yet willing to commit to long-term growth projects."
Since December 2009, the agency said, nonfarm employment has increased by 1.1 million, or an average of 94,000 a month.
Still, economists are hoping that there will be some turnaround in the job market this year as they forecast improvements in economic conditions and growth.
"The U.S. economy finally appears to be picking up steam and headed toward recovery," said Steven Blitz, a senior economist for ITG Investment Research, wrote in a preview of Friday's numbers. "Several economic indicators - including manufacturing and services output, and sales of cars and consumer goods - have shown noticeable improvement over the last few months."
The question, he asked, is whether the labor market will keep pace with other economic growth "or will high unemployment be an enduring feature of the United States' economy?"
The economy is predicted to have grown at least 3 percent in the fourth quarter, with estimates even higher for 2011. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, for example, have forecast growth of 4 percent for this year.
Economists noted that manufacturing, consumer confidence, capital spending, and claims for first-time jobless benefits were among the data that have generally been improving in recent months, though December's retail same-store sales reported this week were weaker than expected.
Personal income and consumer expenditures were higher, while the savings rate declined during the year.
"The figures clearly show that with demand for goods and services increasing, employers have far less justification to cut their payrolls," said Bernard Baumohl, the chief global economist for the Economic Outlook Group, in a recent research note.
In Washington, Congress returned to work this week, and Republicans, who have taken control of the House, have promised to make the economy and job creation a priority. Last month, President Obama and Republican lawmakers reached a compromise that extended tax cuts to all Americans and included $57 billion for unemployment insurance, a bipartisan effort that underscored the urgency felt by the administration and by lawmakers in both parties to prop up the still-struggling recovery.
President Obama called Friday's jobs report the latest evidence that the policies of his administration were working to help the economy recover from a recession that was "the worst in our lifetime."
"The economy added 1.3 million jobs last year. And each quarter was stronger than the previous quarter," Mr. Obama said, speaking after touring a window maker in Maryland. "Our mission has to be to accelerate hiring and accelerate growth. It depends on keeping up the fight for every job and every business."
But Mr. Obama also sounded a note of caution, recognizing that unemployment remained high and that millions of people were still not back to work.
"We will not rest until we have fully recovered from this recession and we have reached that brighter day," he said.
Economists generally estimate that the economy needs to add more than 120,000 jobs a month simply to absorb newcomers into the labor force, a pace that employers fell behind last year.
That requires economic growth of about 2.5 percent, said Mr. Greenhaus.
"We should repeat that we continue to believe payrolls should continue to grow in 2011 and we currently expect growth of about 200,000 jobs per month," he said on Friday.
Goldman Sachs economists predicted the unemployment rate would fall significantly this year and in 2012.
Sven Jari Stehn, an economist at Goldman Sachs, noted that initial unemployment claims declined sharply in the latter part of 2010, a trend typically associated with an acceleration in hiring. That, he wrote, was "a prediction in line with our forecast for an average monthly payroll gain of around 180,000 in 2011."
Mr. Kleintop noted that the increases in jobs were mostly in the temporary help, education and health care fields, rather than some of the crucial sectors like manufacturing and technology.
According to the Labor Department, most of the increases in jobs last month were in the two sectors - leisure and hospitality, and health care - while others were little changed. Leisure and hospitality showed an additional 47,000 jobs, while health care added 36,000. The retail sector added 12,000 jobs, despite reports of good holiday sales in November and December.
Manufacturing companies, which had shown relatively good hiring early in 2010, appeared to back off in November, when they eliminated 13,000 jobs; they added 10,000 jobs in December.
The report fell below analysts' forecasts of 150,000 for nonfarm payrolls and 175,000 in private payrolls, according to a Bloomberg survey.
The stock market appeared to have a tepid reaction to the report. In early trading, Wall Street indexes were down by less than 0.1 percent. . Bond prices rose, sending yields lower.
Several aspects of the economy and the unemployment situation are still mired in uncertainty. Still, the number of people who were unemployed because they had been laid off or had concluded a temporary assignment declined in December by 548,000 after increasing in November by about 370,000.
Economists say that in addition to the numbers of jobs added, the trend in monthly changes in hours worked and earnings are important because of their implications for consumption patterns.
The average workweek remained steady at 34.3 hours in December compared with November, while average hourly earnings rose to $22.78, compared with $22.75 in November.
The median length of time the unemployed had been out of work rose to 22.4 weeks in December, the fourth consecutive monthly increase. It was 21.7 weeks in November, revised from 21.6 weeks.
Still, economists remain cautious.
Anthony Chan, the chief economist at J. P. Morgan Private Wealth Management, said even if the job market improved, he expected the unemployment rate to stay the same as newly emboldened entrants join those already seeking work.
He said new policy developments in 2010 could help, including the new payroll tax deal and a Federal Reserve program of bond-buying that supports asset prices.
"It is flowing in the right direction," Mr. Chan said, referring to labor market growth.
"But that is not the same as telling the kids in the minivan: 'We are there.' "
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11) Geithner Asks Congress to Raise U.S. Debt Limit Quickly
"A failure to increase the limit in time would force the Treasury to default on legal obligations and payments to bondholders here and abroad 'causing catastrophic damage to the economy,' Mr. Geithner said, threatening the dollar and stopping payments for a range of federal benefits, including military salaries, Social Security and Medicare."
By JACKIE CALMES
January 6, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/business/economy/07debt.html?ref=business
WASHINGTON - The Obama administration warned Congress on Thursday that the government would reach its legal borrowing limit as early as the end of March and no later than May 16 and urged House and Senate leaders to move quickly to raise the debt ceiling to avoid an unprecedented default.
The Treasury secretary, Timothy F. Geithner, sent a formal notification to Capitol Hill a day after a new Congress convened with Republicans now holding a majority in the House and a larger minority in the Senate, and with many of the newcomers pledged to vote against any increase in the debt limit.
Raising the limit is among the least popular actions that Congress must take, and legislative brinkmanship between presidents and lawmakers has played out a number of times in past decades. The coming months promise to add another chapter to the history of budget showdowns: Republicans have said that they will try to force President Obama to accept deep cuts in domestic spending as the price for enough Republican votes to lift the limit.
"The American people will not stand for such an increase unless it is accompanied by meaningful action by the president and Congress to cut spending and end the job-killing spending binge in Washington," the new House speaker, Representative John A. Boehner, Republican of Ohio, said in a statement on Thursday.
On Tuesday, the House approved the new rules of Republicans, effectively making it harder to pass a debt-limit increase. No longer will an increase be automatic with passage of a budget resolution; it will have to be voted on separately.
Treasury officials, in a briefing for reporters, said the administration was leaving to Congress the decision on how much to raise the limit.
Mr. Geithner, in his letter to Congressional leaders of both parties, said the outstanding gross national debt stood at $13.95 trillion, $335 billion below the $14.29 trillion debt limit that Congress set last February. That "headroom," as he called it, is enough to get through the first quarter, but exactly when the government will hit the ceiling this spring depends on the strength of the economy and the amount of tax revenue flowing into the Treasury.
"Failure to increase the limit would be deeply irresponsible," Mr. Geithner wrote, and added: "It is important to emphasize that changing the debt limit does not alter or increase the obligations we have as a nation; it simply permits the Treasury to fund those obligations Congress has already established" - under presidents and Congresses of both parties.
He listed several "exceptional actions" that the Treasury could take to delay hitting the limit - as the Clinton administration under former Secretary Robert E. Rubin did in the mid-1990s when it faced a recalcitrant Republican-controlled Congress. But those steps would buy only several weeks, Mr. Geithner added.
A failure to increase the limit in time would force the Treasury to default on legal obligations and payments to bondholders here and abroad "causing catastrophic damage to the economy," Mr. Geithner said, threatening the dollar and stopping payments for a range of federal benefits, including military salaries, Social Security and Medicare.
"Given the gravity of the challenges facing the U.S. and world economies, the world's confidence in our creditworthiness is even more critical today," Mr. Geithner said.
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12) Financial Lobbyists Seek Softer Rules on Policing Fraud
By BEN PROTESS
January 7, 2011, 11:39 am
http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2011/01/07/financial-lobbyists-seek-softer-rules-on-policing-fraud/?src=busln
Top financial trade groups are lobbying regulators to soften new rules that would crack down on fraud and manipulation in the $600 trillion derivatives industry, regulatory disclosure records show - a debate that seems to center on semantics.
The Dodd-Frank financial overhaul law requires the Commodity Futures Trading Commission to shut down trading practices that disrupt markets, manipulate prices or amount to fraud.
Since August, financial firms have had some 15 meetings with the commission about proposed antifraud measures, according to agency records. And in a Dec. 28 letter to the commission, three trade industry trade groups warned the commission to tread lightly as it writes the regulations.
"Failure to provide clear and straightforward guidance will only serve to add confusion to the markets and potentially chill legitimate trading activities in a competitive market," said the letter, signed by executives from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, the International Swaps and Derivatives Association and the Futures Industry Association.
The associations - which collectively represent the nation's biggest banks, asset managers and derivatives traders - are particularly concerned with the commission's proposed definition of fraud.
The commission, writing a proposed "antimanipulation" rule in November, said it wants to set "broad" criteria for judging traders. The commission likely will take aim at schemes that are intended to mislead investors or manipulate the market. The commission also plans to punish "reckless" behavior.
The industry groups want the commission to raise the bar to proving fraud to "extreme recklessness."
"This is the form of recklessness that effectively constitutes an affirmative intention" to commit fraud, the associations argued in the letter. The "extreme recklessness" criteria would "ensure that its proposed rule does not sweep too broadly and prohibit routine and legitimate trading strategies."
Prosecutors already find it difficult to prove fraud. As DealBook reported, the Justice Department has not brought one criminal case against a major bank or financial executive for their involvement in the financial crisis.
And some lawmakers, including Senator Carl Levin, want the commission to bolster existing proposals. Mr. Levin is chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, which has been scrutinizing disruptive trading practices over the last five years.
"While the proposed rules will make significant and welcome progress," Mr. Levin said in a Jan. 3 letter to the commission, "they do not appear to fully capture all potentially manipulative and disruptive trading activities that occur in today's high-speed, interconnected marketplace."
Dodd-Frank, signed by President Obama in July, left the commission with substantial discretion to enforce the law.
The law does mandate checks on speculative trading. When extreme, speculation is said to cause wild price fluctuations, much to the dismay of consumers at the supermarket and the gas pump.
The law also requires the commission to ban three controversial trading practices, including one known as spoofing, where a trader will make a bogus bid on a commodity contract with the intention of canceling the bid before it is executed.
Dodd-Frank gave the commission the authority to ban other similar practices.
Freddie Mac, the government-controlled housing finance giant, has proposed adding some to the commission's watch list. In a Jan. 3 letter to the commission, Freddie denounced so-called front running - where banks trade on confidential information they receive from a client's trading order.
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13) 'Aflockalypse': Here's Why We Should Really Be Concerned About the Huge Bird and Fish Die-off
By Tara Lohan, AlterNet
Posted on January 7, 2011, Printed on January 7, 2011
http://www.alternet.org/story/149440/
By now, we've all seen the news reports of the "Aflockalypse." The New Year came in with a bang in Beebe, Arkansas when thousands of blackbirds fell from the sky. As news reports of the eerie incident spread, similar stories began surfacing all over the world: Massive fish kills by the thousands in Brazil, New Zealand, the Arkansas River and the Chesapeake; more bird deaths in Louisiana, Kentucky and Sweden; and tens of thousands of dead crabs (aptly named dead devil crabs) washing ashore in the U.K.
2011 seems to have gotten off to an ominous start, but so far no one credible has come up with a theory to link all these occurrences together. They appear to be mostly isolated catastrophes. Sadly, this kind of stuff happens a fair bit, and in our uber-connected world, it's getting easier and easier to share when they do. Although I do admit that some of the purported explanations thus far sound kind of far-fetched. The 100 or so dead jackdaws in Sweden were explained by a veterinarian to a local news outlet: "Our main theory is that the birds were scared away because of the fireworks and landed on the road, but couldn't fly away from the stress and were hit by a car."
One car? Really? I can't imagine being the driver who kills 100 birds simultaneously. But the other incidents, perhaps, have better explanations that are largely due to either weather (cold snap) or environmental factors (fireworks, lightening, disease). As for Britain's crabs -- well, it turns out that this is the third year in a row it has happened, which may or may not be comforting, depending on how you look at things.
The only upside to these die-offs has been the rapt attention of readers, which is great; however, no offense to jackdaws and dead devil crabs, but there are a whole lot of other species on the brink that could use the publicity.
For starters, the World Wide Fund for Nature (also known in the U.S. as the World Wildlife Fund) just released its top 10 list of endangered species: the tiger, polar bear, Pacific walrus, Magellanic penguin, leatherback turtle, Atlantic bluefin tuna, mountain gorilla, monarch butterfly, Javan rhino and the giant panda are the unlucky finalists. While one night of fireworks revelry may have offed a few thousands birds this year, the creatures on WWF's list are teetering on the edge of extinction thanks to decades, and in some cases centuries, of hard work by humans.
Loss of habitat and poaching may claim our remaining 3,200 wild tigers, 720 mountain gorillas and 60 Javan rhinos. Polar bears, Pacific walruses and Magellanic penguins are losing out to climate change. We're doing in leatherback turtles, which have managed to survive on this earth for 100 million years, thanks to overfishing (they're often killed as bycatch), and their habitat is endangered by rising sea levels and temperatures. Bluefin look like they will be eaten into extinction in the form of sushi. Treehugger reported that, "A single bluefin tuna just sold at auction for a new record price of 32.49 million yen in Tokyo. That's nearly $400,000 for a single fish," which means there is a pretty big monetary incentive for fishing them until they are wiped off the planet. Monarch butterflies and giant pandas can hang on only so long as we can protect their vital habitat.
And these 10 are only the tip of the iceberg. A recent infographic on Mother Nature Network reveals that in the last 500 years, 900 species of plants and animals have gone extinct and 10,000 more are close to making that list. We've done the most damage, however, in the last 100 years. Biologically rich Ecuador has the most to lose, with 2,211 endangered species, but the U.S. is a close second (1,203 endangered species).
Honeybees aren't officially designated as endangered, but the population of these essential pollinators is falling thanks to "colony collapse disorder." A recent leaked EPA memo implicates the pesticide clothianidin as a contributor to honeybee die-offs, although sadly the EPA has yet to curb the chemical's use in the U.S.
Bumblebees aren't faring much better, as a recent report concludes that four common species in the U.S. have declined by a startling 97 percent. "According to the Center for Ecology and Hydrology in the UK, three of the 25 British species of bumblebee are already extinct and half of the remainder have shown serious declines, often up to 70 percent, since around the 1970s," writes Sami Grover for Treehugger. Without these pollinators, we'll be incredibly short on food.
If you follow the news, it's likely you've heard about the sad state of our bee populations, but I doubt you're clued into the precarious fate of the Saola. Only discovered in 1992, Saolas are often likened to unicorns, although they have two horns and are found (very rarely) in the mountains of Laos and Vietnam. They are officially designated as "critically endangered," the last bus stop before extinction.
When you begin to stop and take stock (like here in the IUCN Red List Web site), it can be overwhelming. We may lose tiny, but hugely important creatures like the half-inch long krill -- a fisheries staple -- or the ancient and massive gray whale that migrates 10,000 miles a year. And soon, if we are not careful, we may lose entire ecosystems, like the Great Barrier Reef. And life, really and truly, as we know it, will not be the same.
We can do something about this. We can seriously consider what's pushing so much life on this planet toward extinction -- climate change and its myriad manifestations, habitat destruction, pollution, pesticides, poaching, overfishing and hunting, poor management and short-sighted politics.
We can take action now, or we can wait until it starts raining dead birds. Oh wait, that's already happening. I guess that only leaves us with one choice.
Tara Lohan is a senior editor at AlterNet. You can follow her on Twitter @TaraLohan.
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14) 'Don't Repeal Health Law - Go Beyond it to Single-Payer Medicare for All': Doctor's Group
Statement by Physicians for National Health Program
January 7, 2011
http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2011/01/07-5
WASHINGTON - A nationwide organization of doctors who favor a single-payer health care system today rejected calls by Republican leaders to repeal the new health law, noting that the law contains modest benefits for patients that should not be spurned.
["We reject the call by Republican leaders to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), even as we recognize the new law is incapable of resolving our health care morass," said Dr. Garrett Adams, president of the 18,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program.]"We reject the call by Republican leaders to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), even as we recognize the new law is incapable of resolving our health care morass," said Dr. Garrett Adams, president of the 18,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program.
At the same time, the doctors said that the enactment of a single-payer, Medicare-for-all program is the only way to assure high quality, comprehensive care to all Americans and the only way to rein in skyrocketing health care costs.
"We reject the call by Republican leaders to repeal the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA), even as we recognize the new law is incapable of resolving our health care morass," said Dr. Garrett Adams, president of the 18,000-member Physicians for a National Health Program.
"The health law is flawed because it continues our nation's reliance on an inefficient and wasteful private-insurance-based model of financing care - a rickety structure that denies health care access to millions, bankrupts patients, ratchets up costs and frustrates efforts to improve quality," he said.
"That's why we need to move to a single-payer system," he said. "In doing so, we'll save about $400 billion annually by cutting out the unnecessary paperwork and bureaucracy inflicted on us by the private insurers. We'll also gain the one-system bargaining power we need to negotiate lower prices for pharmaceutical drugs and medical supplies."
Adams said the "modest" benefits in the administration's health law include greater funding of community health centers, the expansion of Medicaid coverage, and "measures to restrict some of the most outrageous practices of the private health insurance companies like denying coverage because of pre-existing conditions or rescinding coverage when people get sick."
"These beneficial measures could have been enacted separately," Adams said. "But now that they're part of the law, we cannot in good conscience support the repeal of any provisions that might conceivably benefit our patients."
Adams said Republican leaders' call to repeal PPACA is especially objectionable, given that they have no serious alternative to offer by way of health care reform.
"The GOP and conservatives urge greater reliance on the private sector and 'free market' mechanisms, including less regulation of the insurance industry," Adams said. "Such measures include allowing people to purchase insurance across state lines, which would lead them to buy junk insurance policies from companies in states where consumer protections have been all but eviscerated. It would mean a race to the bottom to even skimpier insurance policies than people have now."
He also dismissed claims by the Republican leadership that tort reform will significantly affect the U.S. health care scene, noting that research has shown malpractice suits have a marginal impact on the costs of medical care.
"The proposals emanating from the GOP leaders would do nothing to control costs or reduce the enormous administrative waste in our current health care system," he said. "They would do nothing to reduce the number of uninsured. In fact, the number of uninsured, now at 51 million, would likely rise much higher - worsening an already catastrophic situation."
Adams, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who resides in Louisville, Ky., said that, in his opinion, Republican leaders who are vowing to repeal the new health law are not really aiming to do so.
"Despite their bluster, GOP lawmakers don't really want to repeal the law because some of their chief financial backers, the health insurance companies, like its basic provisions," he said. "The insurers especially like PPACA's requirement that millions of people buy insurance from them and that at least $447 billion in federal subsidies will be coming their way over the next 10 years as part of this arrangement.
"We reject such political posturing at the expense of human suffering and human lives," Adams said. "We call for a real, sustainable solution to our health care woes. PPACA should be superseded by a comprehensive health reform that provides quality, affordable care to everyone - single-payer national health insurance, an improved Medicare for all."
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15) LA Oscar Grant protests also monitored by law enforcement
By Ali Winston
January 6, 2011
http://informant.kalwnews.org/2011/01/la-oscar-grant-protests-also-monitored-by-law-enforcement/
The surveillance of the Oscar Grant protests over the past two years extended beyond Oakland and San Francisco to Southern California, according to another set of internal Oakland Police documents and communications.
Intelligence bulletins and departmental emails indicate extensive communication between Oakland Police, officials in Los Angeles, and Northern California's "fusion center," an intelligence agency where Homeland Security and local law enforcement gather and share information.
Last month, the Informant revealed the involvement of federal and state law enforcement agencies in policing the July 8th protests that following Johannes Mehserle's involuntary manslaughter conviction for the January 1, 2009 shooting of Oscar Grant on the Fruitvale BART platform.
Mehserle's trial was moved to Los Angeles in 2009 after defense attorney Michael Rains convinced a judge that the former BART officer could not receive a fair trial in the Bay Area. Oscar Grant's family and his supporters joined up with Southern California activists to stage public demonstrations outside the Clara Shortridge Foltz Courthouse in Downtown Los Angeles. Throughout the proceedings, the atmosphere in and outside Judge Robert Perry's courtroom was tense: Judge Perry ejected an Grant supporter for a verbal outburst, and there were scuffles outside the building in the days before the July 8th verdict.
Oakland Police were kept up to speed on events in Los Angeles through bulletins forwarded to them by the Northern California Regional Intelligence Center (NCRIC), the local fusion center. Furthermore, information about a planned July 6th protest in front of the Los Angeles courthouse where Mehserle's trial took place was forwarded to OPD by Ronald Wakabayashi, the Los Angeles regional director of the U.S. Department of Justice's Community Relations Service.
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16) Misery With Plenty of Company
By BOB HERBERT
January 7, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/08/opinion/08herbert.html?_r=1&hp
Consider the extremes. President Obama is redesigning his administration to make it even friendlier toward big business and the megabanks, which is to say the rich, who flourish no matter what is going on with the economy in this country. (They flourish even when they're hard at work destroying the economy.) Meanwhile, we hear not a word - not so much as a peep - about the poor, whose ranks are spreading like a wildfire in a drought.
The politicians and the media behave as if the poor don't exist. But with jobs still absurdly scarce and the bottom falling out of the middle class, the poor are becoming an ever more significant and increasingly desperate segment of the population.
How do you imagine a family of four would live if its annual income was $11,000 or less?
During a conversation I had this week with Peter Edelman, a professor at Georgetown University Law Center and a longtime expert on issues related to poverty, he pointed out that the number of people in that tragically dismal category has grown to more than 17 million. These are the folks trying to make it on incomes below half of the official poverty line, which is $22,000 annually for a family of four.
No one talks about these families and individuals living in extreme poverty. Certainly not the Republicans who were having a dandy time this week deliberately misreading the Constitution and promising budget cuts and other initiatives that will hurt the poor even more.
If you're still having trouble deciding whose side the Republicans are on, just keep in mind that the House G.O.P. bigwig Darrell Issa sent a letter to 150 businesses, trade groups and think tanks asking them to spell out which federal regulations they dislike the most. These are lifeguards on the side of the sharks.
Scared to death of being outdone, President Obama and his sidekicks climbed into their spiffy new G.O.P. costumes and promised in humiliatingly abject tones to shower the business world with whatever government largess they could lay their hands on. The first order of business (pun intended) was the announcement that William Daley, the Chicago wheeler-dealer and former Clinton administration official who landed a fat gig at JPMorgan Chase, would become the president's chief of staff. Mr. Daley was a loud critic of recent financial regulatory reforms and has been obsessed with getting Democrats to be more subservient to business.
The poor, who have been hurt more than anyone else in this recession, don't stand a heartbeat's chance in this political environment. The movers and shakers in government don't even give a thought to being on the side of the angels anymore - they're on the side of the millionaires and billionaires.
Nearly 44 million people were living in poverty in 2009, which was more than 14 percent of the American population and a jump of four million from the previous year. Anyone who thinks things are much better now is delirious. More than 15 million children are poor - one of every five kids in the United States. More than a quarter of all blacks and a similar percentage of Hispanics are poor.
Are we doing anything about this? No. Our government officials, from the president on down, are too busy kissing the bejeweled fingers of the megarich.
Professor Edelman broke the poor into two categories: the new poor, who have lost jobs and homes and otherwise been clobbered by the recession; and the old poor, who in many cases had previously been working, sometimes sporadically or part time, at jobs that didn't pay much. Many of those low-paying jobs have since vanished and the old poor have just been crushed.
"There is this astonishing number of people all the way down there at the bottom that we just don't talk about," Mr. Edelman said, "and they're in very big trouble."
Welfare, even for the poorest of the poor, is not much help. More than 17 million people may be living in extreme poverty, but welfare, for most of the people who need it, was "reformed" right out of existence. TANF (Temporary Assistance for Needy Families), which is what welfare is called now, helps far fewer people than welfare used to, even though the poor have been laid low by the worst economy since the Depression.
Hardly anyone cares. Hardly anyone even notices.
With the tax cuts for the rich saved and William Daley coming on board, the atmosphere is being readied for Obama & Co. to tap the fat cats for the zillions necessary for next year's re-election run. And that, of course, is the only thing that really matters.
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17) New Charges of Georgia inmate beatings prompt calls for more access
Wednesday, January 5, 2011
http://charlene.blogs.finalcall.com/2011/01/new-charges-of-georgia-inmate-beatings.html
Press Conference
Ever since thousands of inmates in several prisons across the State of Georgia staged a peaceful strike to raise awareness about and forge a change in their inhumane living conditions and treatment behind bars, they have been retaliated against, according to a coalition that formed to support them in their quest for better treatment, access to loved ones, proper nutrition, and healthcare, among many other things.
During one of their visits, a fact-finding mission comprised of the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners' Rights found that the inmates were fed bologna sandwiches for several days straight, and some of them were beaten, put in isolation cells, and many were transferred to undisclosed locations. The Coalition is reporting that there are more abuses and new charges of beatings, and they will appeal to state and prison officials for more access to the inmates.
The Coalition is scheduled to hold a press conference outlining their request in Georgia, tomorrow. Here's is the full press release, which I received moments ago. (Beneath the press release are the links to three recent articles I wrote and co-wrote for the Final Call regarding the strike, dubbed "Lockdown for Liberty!"
Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners' Rights
For Immediate Release
Contact: Elaine Brown, 404-542-1211
January 5, 2010 Leila McDowell, 410-336-7879
concernedcoalitionga@gmail.com Facebook.com
Press Conference
THURSDAY, JANUARY 6, 2011, 10:30 a.m.
Georgia State Capitol
206 Washington Street
Atlanta, Georgia
NEW CHARGES OF INMATE BEATINGS
Reports from Prison Visits
Set Off Coalition Appeal to DOC and Governor-Elect for More Access
The Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners' Rights, formed to support the interests and agenda of thousands of Georgia prisoners who staged a peaceful protest and work strike initiated early last December, will host a press conference this Thursday. The mothers and other family members of Terrance Dean and Miguel Jackson, inmates reportedly brutally beaten by guards at Macon State and Smith State Prisons in connection with the strike, will be in attendance.
The press conference follows reports of violent abuses of these men and others and the findings of fact by Coalition delegations after visits to two prisons in December. These reports have increased fears of the targeting of and retaliation against inmates on account of their peaceful protest for their human rights and raise the urgency for immediate reform.
"These new developments have increased our fears and our legitimate call for more access to inmates," said Elaine Brown, Co-Chair of the Concerned Coalition to Respect Prisoners Rights.
Ed Dubose, Coalition Co-Chair and president of the NAACP of Georgia, stated, "Family members are frantic and mothers are crying and anguished after learning their loved ones have been badly injured. We cannot allow those cries to go unanswered. Since the start of the December 9 peaceful work stoppage and appeal for reform and respect for human rights, some inmates have been targeted and others have simply disappeared. We are urging the Department of Corrections and Governor-Elect Nathan Deal to act now to halt these unjust practices and treat these men like human beings."
Black, brown, white, Muslim, Christian, Rastafarian prisoners, including those at Augusta, Baldwin, Calhoun, Hancock, Hays, Macon, Rogers, Smith, Telfair, Valdosta and Ware State Prisons, joined a peaceful work stoppage December 9, 2010, refusing to come out of their cells as part of a petition to the corrections department.
Among concerns expressed by inmates were not being paid for their labor; being charged excessive fees for basic medical treatments; language barriers suffered by Latino inmates; arbitrary, harsh disciplinary practices; too few opportunities for education and self improvement; and unjust parole denials.
Coalition leaders attending the press conference will be Mr. Dubose, Ajamu Baraka of the U.S. Human Rights Network, Pastor Kenneth Glasgow of The Ordinary People Society, Chara Jackson of the ACLU of Georgia, along with Abdul Sharrief Muhammad of the Nation of Islam.
The prisoners have been petitioning the corrections department for their human rights, including wages for labor, decent health care and nutritional meals, a halt to cruel and unusual punishments, and an end to unjust just parole decisions.
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18) Tax Cuts From '70s Confront Brown Again in California
By ADAM NAGOURNEY
January 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/us/09calif.html?hp
LOS ANGELES - The last time Jerry Brown was governor of California, voters passed Proposition 13, drastically slashing local property taxes and constraining lawmakers from raising any other taxes. Mr. Brown first fought the proposition but then executed it with gusto and sent billions of dollars from the state to school districts and counties to help offset the lost revenues.
That may be a decision that Mr. Brown has come to regret, as his career has come full circle and taken him back to Sacramento 33 years later to confront yet another budget crisis.
As much as Proposition 13 signaled a national revolt against taxes that reverberates to this day, its actual legacy in California - not just the proposition itself, but the way Mr. Brown and the Legislature responded to it - has emerged as a major obstacle to the new governor as he confronts what is probably the worst fiscal crisis in this state's history.
The measure cut off a major source of revenue by capping property taxes at 1 percent of valuation and required a two-thirds vote by the Legislature to raise taxes. And because it cut property tax collections by local government by nearly two-thirds, the state, initially at Mr. Brown's behest, took on more and more costly responsibility for financing schools, welfare and other services that were once the responsibilities of local governments.
An estimated 70 percent of the taxes collected by the state now goes to local governments.
On Monday, Mr. Brown will propose a fiscal rescue plan to deal with the state's budget crisis that aides said would propose shifting back to local governments many of the programs that the state took over. In effect, it is an about-face from what Mr. Brown did the first time he was governor.
And then, to give local governments the ability to pay for the programs in the short term, Mr. Brown will also propose that voters approve an initiative to temporarily extend $10 billion worth of taxes, due to expire later this year.
More fundamental, Mr. Brown is also likely to call for local governments to be given greater authority to raise taxes on their own to pay for those programs in the future; right now, they are limited by Proposition 13 and other state initiatives.
Mr. Brown is not the only governor struggling to find new approaches to budgeting in the hope of addressing the shattering effects the recession has had on state governments. But the crisis in California stands out because of its severity, complexity and size. Mr. Brown is facing a budget shortfall of $28.5 billion.
Local officials across the state have been bracing for the impact of shifting the programs back to them, which some said could force tough decisions about whether to cut programs, like schools and public safety, or raise taxes.
Others said that Mr. Brown was not going far enough and that the time had come to confront Proposition 13 head-on by, for example, lifting the property tax cap on commercial properties.
"The Proposition 13 debate needs to happen; we've just got to be honest," Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa of Los Angeles said. "At a time of a financial crisis as great as any the state has faced in modern times, the time is now to address the inequity of Prop 13 that allows large corporate interests to get a windfall meant for homeowners. We are not funding government. We are just decimating government and the services it provides."
But Jon Coupal, the president of the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, which was founded by one of the authors of Proposition 13, said Mr. Brown would be making a huge mistake if he followed Mr. Villaraigosa's advice.
"Since this organization exists to defend Prop 13, we do the gut check every couple of years, and every year it's the same thing," he said. "If it were on the ballot today, it would pass by the same 66 percent margin that it did in 1978. Jerry knows that. Jerry's not stupid. He's a very bright guy. If he is going to go for tax increases, it's not going to be by messing with Proposition 13. He knows as well as everyone else knows that it's the third rail of California politics."
Repealing or rolling back Proposition 13, which Mr. Brown's aides said he would not do, would be a politically explosive move and would require approval of the voters. But even going as far he intends - Mr. Brown's realignment plan would take a big step toward addressing one of the ways Proposition 13 altered the fiscal landscape here - illustrates the intensity of the state's fiscal woes and the drastic steps that the new governor believes are needed.
"The optimist in me thinks he is doing this as a way to open up the can of worms," said Joe Mathews, a co-author of "California Crackup: How Reform Broke the Golden State and How We Can Fix It." "This is the politically wisest and politically easiest way to unwind this monstrous system. Everyone likes local government."
Mr. Brown's proposal to help communities pay for the programs by asking voters to extend the expiring taxes has stirred concern among local officials.
"The problem is, they're just extending for a year - what's after that?" Mr. Villaraigosa said. "It's just another way of shifting the state's deficits onto cities, counties and school districts. I'm not against it, but the devil is going to be in the details."
State legislators said there was virtually no chance of seeking to roll back the Proposition 13 property tax limitation on homeowners. But, they said, given the severity of the problem, there may be consideration of the two-tiered property tax system - one for homeowners and a higher one for business property - that Mr. Villaraigosa is suggesting.
"I'm always open to discussing things like this," said John A. Perez, a Democrat who is the Assembly speaker. "But there's broad-based bipartisan support for maintaining individual protections for homeowners. No one has proposed taking away those protections or tweaking them for homeowners."
Asked about commercial property, he said, "That is where there has been some discussion, and I expect more of that."
Darrell Steinberg, the president of the State Senate, applauded Mr. Brown for moving toward realigning the way state services are delivered, and in effect reversing what the state did in 1978.
"You can call it irony, or you can call it opportunity," Mr. Steinberg said. "Look, I can picture myself in his shoes after Prop 13 passed. There was this great fear of libraries closing, of police and fire services being dramatically reduced. They had to respond. Obviously, in retrospect, that wasn't the correct response."
Daniel Schnur, the director of the Jesse M. Unruh Institute of Politics at the University of Southern California, said he doubted anyone would take issue with that. "It's hard to blame him for revisiting an issue 30 years after the decision," he said.
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19) U.S. Subpoenas Twitter Over WikiLeaks Supporters
By SCOTT SHANE and JOHN F. BURNS
January 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/world/09wiki.html?ref=world
WASHINGTON - Prosecutors investigating the disclosure of thousands of classified government documents by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks have gone to court to demand the Twitter account activity of several people linked to the organization, including its founder, Julian Assange, according to the group and a copy of a subpoena made public late Friday.
The subpoena is the first public evidence of a criminal investigation, announced last month by Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr., that has been urged on by members of Congress of both parties but is fraught with legal and political difficulties for the Obama administration. It was denounced by WikiLeaks, which has so far made public only about 1 percent of the quarter-million confidential diplomatic cables in its possession but has threatened to post them all on the Web if criminal charges are brought.
Dozens of Pentagon and State Department officials have worked for months to assess the damage done to American diplomatic and military operations by the disclosures. In recent weeks, Justice Department officials have been seeking a legal rationale for charging Mr. Assange with criminal behavior, including whether he had solicited leaks.
The move to get the information from five prominent figures tied to the group was revealed late Friday, when Birgitta Jonsdottir, a former WikiLeaks activist who is also a member of Iceland's Parliament, received an e-mail notification from Twitter.
In the message, obtained by The New York Times, the company told her it had received a legal request for details regarding her account and warned that the company would have to respond unless the matter was resolved or "a motion to quash the legal process has been filed." The subpoena was attached.
The subpoena was issued by the United States attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia on Dec. 14 and asks for the complete account information of Pfc. Bradley Manning, the Army intelligence specialist awaiting a court martial under suspicion of leaking materials to WikiLeaks, as well as Ms. Jonsdottir, Mr. Assange and two computer programmers, Rop Gonggrijp and Jacob Appelbaum. The request covers addresses, screen names, telephone numbers and credit card and bank account numbers, but does not ask for the content of private messages sent using Twitter.
Some published reports in recent weeks have suggested that the Justice Department may have secretly impaneled a grand jury in the Eastern District of Virginia, which often handles national security cases, to take evidence in the WikiLeaks inquiry. But the subpoena, unsealed by a Jan. 5 court order at the request of Twitter's lawyers, was not issued by a grand jury.
In Twitter messages, WikiLeaks confirmed the subpoena and suggested that Google and Facebook might also have been issued such legal demands. Officials for Facebook declined to comment, and Google did not immediately respond to an inquiry.
WikiLeaks suggested that the United States was hypocritical for promoting an "Internet Freedom" initiative and decrying Iran's interference with activists' use of the Internet while pursuing a criminal investigation of the group's activities.
A State Department spokesman, Philip J. Crowley, said that Internet freedom "has always coexisted with the rule of law" and "does not mean that the Internet can be used to harm others," such as people who might be at risk if they were identified in diplomatic cables that were made public.
Mr. Appelbaum wrote in his Twitter feed on Saturday that Twitter's lawyers had warned him against using or receiving private messages using the service. "Do not send me Direct Messages," he wrote. "My Twitter account contents have apparently been invited to the (presumably-Grand Jury) in Alexandria."
Jodi Olson, a spokeswoman for Twitter, said the company would not comment. But she said that "to help users protect their rights, it's our policy to notify users about law enforcement and governmental requests for their information, unless we are prevented by law from doing so."
Of the five individuals named in the subpoena, only two - Mr. Manning and Mr. Appelbaum - are American citizens. The others include an Australian, Mr. Assange; Ms. Jonsdottir, of Iceland; and Mr. Gonggrijp, a Dutch citizen. This raised the possibility of a diplomatic quarrel - other nations whose citizens are involved in such subpoenas could argue that American laws were being used to stifle free communications between individuals who were not Americans and who were not in the United States at the time of the messages.
Reached by telephone in Iceland, Ms. Jonsdottir said that she would be contesting the court action. She said that she had not exchanged sensitive information using her Twitter account, "but it's just the fact that another country would request this sort of personal information from an elected official without having any case against me."
Iceland's foreign minister, she said, has requested a meeting with the American ambassador to Iceland to ask, among other things, whether a grand jury inquiry prompted the subpoena.
"It is so sad," she said. "I have so many friends in the U.S., and there are so many things that I respect about it. This is not how America wants to present itself to the world."
Obama administration officials on Saturday indicated that the investigation was still in an early phase, with a broad net cast for evidence regarding WikiLeaks' interactions with Private Manning, 23, who has been held for months in a military detention center at Quantico, Va., on suspicion of being WikiLeaks' source for the classified military and diplomatic records.
The subpoena seeks Twitter account activity since Nov. 1, a few weeks before Private Manning is alleged to have started downloading documents from his military computer and giving them to WikiLeaks.
Glenn Greenwald, a lawyer and writer who posted the subpoena on his blog at Salon.com, suggested investigators may be focusing on the first of the disclosures of which Private Manning has been accused - a military video depicting two American helicopters in Iraq in 2007 firing at people on the ground who included two Reuters journalists, both of whom were killed. An edited version of the video listed Mr. Assange, Ms. Jonsdottir, and Mr. Gonggrijp as producers.
Leak prosecutions have been rare and have almost always focused on government employees who disclose classified information, not on journalists or others who publish it. In its first two years, the Obama administration has charged five current or former government employees for such leaks, a record.
But there has never been a successful prosecution of a nongovernment employee for disseminating classified information. Most legal experts believe that efforts to bring criminal charges against WikiLeaks volunteers would face numerous practical and legal obstacles, and some human rights organizations and constitutional scholars have said such a prosecution could damage press freedom.
Technology and telecommunications companies receive thousands of subpoenas and court orders every year in which the authorities demand a broad range of information about their customers, from the content of their e-mails, to the Internet Protocol addresses of their computers, to their files that are stored online and location data from their cellphones.
The volume of requests has become so large, and the rules guarding personal information so patchy, that in March a coalition of Internet companies and communications carriers teamed up with civil liberties groups in an effort to lobby Congress. The coalition, Digital Due Process, wants to strengthen the privacy protections for online information and simplify the laws governing access to those records by law enforcement authorities.
WikiLeaks faced severe criticism after it posted military documents from the war in Afghanistan in July without removing the names of Afghan citizens who had assisted the United States. Since then, WikiLeaks has become far more cautious, stripping names out of Iraq war documents posted online and moving slowly in publishing the 251,287 diplomatic cables it obtained.
But Mr. Assange has posted an encrypted "insurance" file on several Web sites containing all or most of the unpublished cables and possibly other classified documents. Thousands of supporters around the world have downloaded the file, and Mr. Assange has suggested that if legal action is taken against him or the organization, he would release the encryption key and make the documents public.
"If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically," Mr. Assange said in an online interview with readers of The Guardian last month.
Scott Shane reported from Washington, and John F. Burns from London. Reporting was contributed by Ravi Somaiya from London, Claire Cain Miller and Miguel Helft from San Francisco, Eric Lipton from Washington, and J. David Goodman from New York.
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20) Alaska Pipeline Shut Down After Leak Discovered
By REUTERS
January 9, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2011/01/09/us/news-us-oil-pipeline-alaska.html?ref=business
Filed at 1:15 a.m. ET
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - The Trans Alaska Pipeline shut down on Saturday after a leak was discovered at the intake pump station at Prudhoe Bay, constricting supply in one of the United States' key oil arteries.
Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., the operator of the 800-mile (1,280 kilometre) line which runs from the Prudhoe Bay oilfield to the tanker port of Valdez, said the leak was discovered Saturday morning. Oil producers are in the process of cutting output to 5 percent of the normal rate of around 630,000 barrels per day.
There is no estimate yet of how long the pipeline -- which carries about 12 percent of U.S. oil production -- will be shut down or when normal production can resume, said Alyeska spokeswoman Michelle Egan.
So far, shipments from the port of Valdez, the terminus of the pipeline, are unaffected and tankers are being loaded on schedule. Oil produced during the shutdown will be stored at Prudhoe Bay until the pipeline reopens.
There is no estimate of how much oil leaked, but Alyeska said no oil has been found to have escaped beyond concrete encasing the pipeline.
"The concrete encasement is why we don't believe there's any environmental impact," said Egan. "Until we can excavate, we won't be able to say that definitely."
Alyeska is owned by oil companies with interests on Alaska's North Slope, the third-largest U.S. oil producing region after the Gulf of Mexico and Texas. Major owners in the region are BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil Corp.
BP, which operates the Prudhoe Bay field, has started the process of reducing production, said company spokesman Steve Rinehart.
"I can't give you an estimate of how long it will take to get down to 5 percent, but we are working quickly and safely to do that," he said. Tasks include freeze-protecting lines and facilities, he said.
The leak was discovered in the basement of a building that holds booster pumps for Pump Station 1, the intake station for the oil artery, Egan said. The booster pumps are housed in a building separate from the main pump building, and the leak appears to be in a concrete-encased pipeline on the exterior, she said.
The last time the pipeline was shut down unexpectedly was in May, when a power outage at a pump station triggered a series of events that caused an estimated 210,000 gallons (5,000 barrels) of crude oil to spill out of the storage tank at Pump Station 9, located about 105 miles south of Fairbanks.
The spill, which shut the pipeline for 79 hours, was the biggest in Alaska since the 212,252-gallon spill in 2006 from a corroded transit pipeline at the Prudhoe Bay field.
Alyeska has been automating and centralizing operations, part of its plan for coping with reduced throughput and dramatically increased cost per barrel shipped. Oil flow through the line peaked in 1988 at over 2 million barrels a day, but output from Prudhoe Bay and other maturing North Slope fields has dwindled significantly since then.
Critics argue that Alyeska's operational changes pose safety risks, and they directed much of their ire at former Alyeska President Kevin Hostler, who retired in September.
To replace Hostler, Alyeska's owners hired retired U.S. Coast Guard Vice Admiral Thomas Barrett, the former head of the Department of Transportation's Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Administration. Barrett officially started at Alyeska on Jan 1.
(Writing by Mary Milliken and Bill Rigby, editing by Philip Barbara)
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21) Profits are Booming. Why Aren't Jobs?
"American businesses reported that third-quarter profits in 2010 rose at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion, the steepest annual surge since officials began tracking such matters 60 years ago. It was the seventh consecutive quarter in which corporate profits climbed."
By MICHAEL POWELL
January 8, 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/09/weekinreview/09powell.html?ref=business
To gaze upon the world of American corporations is to see a sunny place of terrific profits and princely bonuses. American businesses reported that third-quarter profits in 2010 rose at an annual rate of $1.659 trillion, the steepest annual surge since officials began tracking such matters 60 years ago. It was the seventh consecutive quarter in which corporate profits climbed.
Staring at such balance sheets, you might almost forget that much of the nation lives under slate-gray fiscal skies, a place of 9.4 percent unemployment and record levels of foreclosures and indebtedness.
And therein lies the enduring mystery of this Great Recession and Not So Great Recovery: Why have corporate profits (and that market thermometer, the Dow) spiked even as 15 million Americans remain mired in unemployment, a number without precedent since the Great Depression? Employment tends to lag a touch behind profit growth, but history offers few parallels to what is happening today.
"Usually the business cycle is a rising-and-falling, all-boats-together phenomenon," noted J. Bradford DeLong, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, and a deputy assistant secretary for economic policy in the Clinton Treasury Department. "It's quite a puzzle when you have this disjunction between profits on the one hand and unemployment."
A search for answers leads in several directions. The bulls' explanation, heard with more frequency these days, has the virtue of being straightforward: corporate profits are the economy's pressure cooker, building and building toward an explosive burst that will lead to much hiring next year.
The December jobs numbers suggest that that moment has yet to arrive, as the nation added just 103,000 jobs, or less than the number needed to keep pace with population growth. The leisure industry and hospitals accounted for 83,000 jobs; large corporations added a tiny fraction.
Consumers appear to have put a toe or two back into the water, as holiday spending rose (although it fell short of analysts' forecasts) and families began to replace the ailing refrigerator or the aging minivan. Car sales are rising.
But relatively few economists, even those who see signs of an improving economy, sound particularly buoyant, a concern shared by liberals and conservatives alike. Jobless recoveries followed on the heels of the last two recessions, but neither prefigured the depth of the trouble this time. After the 1990-91 recession, it took 23 months to add back the jobs lost. After the 2001 recession, it took 38 months. (And it's worth keeping in mind that one of the great housing and credit bubbles in American history fed that hiring; no economist expects that to repeat itself).
At the current rate, the economy will need 72 to 90 months to recapture the jobs lost during the Great Recession. And that does not account for the five million jobs needed to keep pace with a growing population.
None of this has slowed the unprecedented rise in corporate profits. The reasons are many.
More so than in the past, many American-based corporations earn a great portion of their profits overseas. And thanks to porous tax laws, these companies return fewer of those profits to American shores than in the past.
"The big American companies are really global," said Robert Reich, former labor secretary for President Clinton. "They can show big profits from foreign sales. G.M. is making more Buicks overseas than in the United States. There's no special pop for the United States worker."
Key corporate sectors, too, have undergone a Darwinian pruning during the last three years. In the financial arena, a few hyperprofitable firms now stand where many more once stood.
"If you're Goldman and Morgan Chase, and you once had to compete against Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, well, of course it's easier now to show a profit," said Daniel Alpert, managing partner of Westwood Capital L.L.C., an investment banking firm. "If you have a modest reduction in expenses, and an industry consolidation at the same time, that translates into a massive increase in earnings."
Surviving corporate leaders drew sobering lessons from their near-death experience of 2008 and 2009, when brand-name corporations nearly ran short of the cash needed to meet payrolls.
"They found the financial system was nowhere near as safe as they thought - they no longer think they can borrow as quickly," said Simon H. Johnson, an economics professor at M.I.T. and former chief economist for the International Monetary Fund. "So the amount of cash that they think they should have for precautionary purposes is way up."
Interest rates are so low that traders can pile up profits by exploiting the spread between a near-zero funds rate and rates on Treasury bonds. This allows some corporations to mark profits without selling much or hiring anyone.
Desmond Lachman, a former managing director at Salomon Smith Barney who now serves as a scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative policy center, sees corporate leaders reshaping their worlds.
"Corporations are taking huge advantage of the slack in the labor market - they are in a very strong position and workers are in a very weak position," he said. "They are using that bargaining power to cut benefits and wages, and to shorten hours." That strategy, Mr. Lachman said, serves corporate and shareholder imperatives, but "very much jeopardizes our chances of experiencing a real recovery."
These profits, however, may not be as large as they seem. Justin Fox, editorial director of the Harvard Business Review Group, dices the question of productive corporate profits still more finely in a recent column. He figures that pre-tax domestic corporate profits exclusive of the financial sector are the best measure of the "underlying health of business in America."
He's not terribly impressed. Profits for these companies "repeatedly topped 12 percent in the 1950s and 1960s," he writes. But in the third quarter of 2010, this sector's share of national income stood at 7.03 percent.
Some economists, conservative and liberal, divine forbidding portents in all of this. If profits and employment no longer rise and fall together, they worry, then an already strained social compact will grow yet more frayed.
Market bulls applauded in November when the Conference Board revealed that consumer confidence was on the rise. But David Rosenberg, an economist at the investment firm Gluskin Sheff, noted that this increase owed entirely to the optimism of higher-income Americans, who are feeling better and better.
The housing market, by contrast, created millions of middle-class jobs and accounted for much of the wealth creation of the past decade. But that sector remains nearly comatose.
"I don't see a pop in corporate hiring, because why should they hurry?" said Professor Johnson, the former International Monetary Fund economist. "They are paying themselves well and with demand so low, they don't feel they are missing out on anything."
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